


Tautology

by Tonbury



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Cheating, I wrote this literally almost a decade ago and am still kind of proud of it so guess what here it is, M/M, Written when no one thought Sam was coming back, a small amount of pseudo-tasteful smut, arguably more metaphors than are healthy, set between s2 and s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23545309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonbury/pseuds/Tonbury
Summary: When Blaine leaves for the summer, he unwittingly leaves behind a boyfriend struggling with a newfound appreciation for his own desire.
Relationships: Sam Evans/Kurt Hummel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	1. Unlocked

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I wrote this in 2011. Why am I posting it here now? Quarantine makes people do crazy things, that's why. I was about halfway through it when it was announced that Sam was being cut from the show, so I tweaked the plot midstream and the result was something I'm pretty proud of. If you don't enjoy angst or disastrously thick prose this story probably isn't for you, but hey, it's 2020 so I'm not sure this story is really for anyone anymore. I'm okay with that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hi?" Sam asks through his smile.
> 
> "Hi," Kurt responds dumbly. Sam does this to him, or perhaps he does this to Sam: They become awkward together. Not uncomfortable, per se; neither avoids interacting with the other, to Kurt's knowledge, and it is a friendly sort of awkwardness, but Kurt has never been able to pinpoint exactly why it arises.
> 
> But as to Sam's question. He wants to swim, not only in fact to swim but to risk drawing glances for something other than his wardrobe, for, he dares to hope, a more intrinsic physical appeal. It is not exactly that his new desire has given him greater confidence; it has rather enabled within him recklessness, a subtle longing for a sharp thrill. "You're right, I should. Swim, I mean."
> 
> "Mhm." Sam glances down at his squirt gun quickly, still smiling, and Kurt wonders if he should revert to acting affronted in preemptive self-defense. "What?" Sam asks, in response to some face Kurt doesn't realize he's making. There is mischief in his voice.
> 
> "Don't even think about it, Evans," Kurt says, taking a step back.
> 
> "Think about what?"
> 
> "Think about what you're thinking about."

By the poolside is a slate wall that catches ephemeral bands of light reflected off the water, and sometimes through the brown tint of his sunglasses the sight reminds Kurt of old sheet music, of yellow paper and staves bleached impossibly white in the sun. When he was younger he would perch in the branches of a gnarled boxelder (long since uprooted) and pretend he was a bird reading his song from the wall, one imagined note at a time. He had supposed, at that age, that all birds read their songs in the light around them—how else could whole flocks recite the same darling melodies with such exactitude, such unerring fidelity to their mother tongue?

His head tips back, bouncing lightly on the rubber straps of his beach chair, and he scans the sky—for birds, at first, and then for nothing in particular. Thin clouds make nests in the robin's egg blue. A summer breeze teases his arms and legs. He closes his eyes.

Over the sharp sounds of children splashing one another and the dull rustle of conversation, he hears for a brief instant some nameless bird's bright chirp, and his mind wanders inevitably to Pavarotti, to a sparkling box buried in the shade. Pavarotti. His canary-in-a-coal-mine. Dalton may not have suffocated the poor bird, but it had suffocated Kurt, and the canary's death had been the first of many steps leading him out of those stuffy halls: antique-chic, sure, but his appreciation for a good Jane Austen novel aside, he has no desire to live in the 1800s.

Blaine has told him before that he reads too much into Pavarotti's death—Blaine insists that even if Kurt had never eulogized the canary's passing with "Blackbird," he would not have been waiting long _for their moment to arise_ —and maybe he's right. But as a child Kurt had searched for years for a meaning to give his mother's death, and found nothing, so he clings to the comforting thought that perhaps Pavarotti's end served a purpose, selfish though the thought sometimes sounds in his own head.

His shirt and swimsuit feel clean and hot, his bare feet hot and dry. Somewhere nearby, Artie, also poolside (though not, as in Kurt's case, by choice), begins to sing: "Under the sea, under the sea..." Kurt hears Rachel's high-pitched laugh and sighs to himself.

Blaine's Six Flags set is three-fifths Disney (less than two-thirds but more than half, at any rate), and in his mind he can hear his boyfriend croon "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and belt breathily the chorus of "Colors of the Wind." He sighs again, and unprompted his memory begins to tease him with sensations, echoes of the morning of Blaine's departure: the touch of soft fingers against the smooth arc of his cheek, gentle like bird feathers even as their mouths burned together. The shake of his skin and gong of his heart as Blaine's hand wandered slowly down the fabric of his shirt, settling finally at his stomach, a single fingertip extended beneath the beak of his jeans. The silent contortions of his throat, Blaine's dark pupils wide, the groan of a zipper, each tooth undone a needle of nerves, his mouth hanging open, just slightly, in white panic. A feeling like breaking glass. Blaine's cold hand. "Do you want me to stop?" _No_. He can't say it aloud but it doesn't matter. His knees feel hollow. A feeling like glass breaking. Like breaking glass, like a wall falling, a door being unlocked.

Kurt feels himself reddening, and not from the sun. He sits up and brings his knees to his chest. Blaine had washed his hands, kissed Kurt goodbye, and left for the summer, but Kurt feels frozen in time, trapped in that moment of... _ecstasy_ feels too temporary, too focused on the idea of physical pleasure. It is more than that. It is... _emancipation_.

Yes.

He breathes deeply. He has never been a stranger, of course, to the magmatic rush of lust, but his embarrassed and somewhat overstated reaction to Blaine's suggestion some months earlier that he familiarize himself with the basics of sex had been, for the most part, quite honest. He had never before understood the male fascination with carnality, and though in one sense he had often felt himself superior for his lack, civilized and romantic, in another he had sometimes felt a sliver of shame—the sense of segregation from his own sex needed no exacerbation. Even his fantasies had been practical; pleasuring himself to thoughts of Finn (a thought that now makes him gag), or Sam, or even Blaine had been a chore—something that had to be done, for the sake of his own sanity—enjoyable in a shallow way but sullying, and ultimately unfulfilling, as though a thin layer of oil kept him floating over the blue depths of real satisfaction.

He understands now.

He feels desire's aura like the heatless glaze of moonlight, a raw pallor that haunts and charges his every interaction. Its alien glow colors the corners of his daydreams. It is as though a switch has been flipped and a new electricity surges through the conduit of his heart—a window unbroken by hard swings has shattered at a faint touch—a hard oaken door has been unlocked.

He is smiling, but the scent of sunscreen fills his nostrils and reminds him to frown. The adverse affects of the lotion on his complexion are moderately better than the alternative—he burns like a vampire, and not the gauche Twilight variety (he's as big a fan of sparkle as there ever was, but no amount of Robert Pattinson can make that sort of glitter look good). Still, if his father would just let him invest in a more expensive variety—he has a list of potential options—his summer night cleansing ritual could be greatly simplified, which would mean more time to Skype with Blaine.

Ah well. He has advocated as such to his father on several occasions, but Burt Hummel is not above guilt tripping when it suits his needs. "We spent your moisturizing budget sending you to Dalton" had been his wry reply.

Kurt supposes he shouldn't complain. There are those who can afford less, after all.

He waits for Sam Evens to enter his line of vision as if on cue, but the faux-blond is busy catering to his siblings elsewhere (he can hear the younger Evans' chatter, though even listening carefully he can't distinguish which voice belongs to Stevie and which to Stacie), so he settles for closing his eyes and imagining Blaine at his side, holding his hand, the warm wind his breath, and goosebumps rise in a curving trail up his arm and down his side, snaking brashly beneath his swimsuit, as he lets foul thoughts stir him, feels powerful in his fresh desire, opens himself to—

"No no no no Stevie don't no stay away from don't it's—"

When the sensation first hits him his body rudely translates his hormones all to adrenaline, and so his first reaction is one of hysterics: He recoils and leaps up as though whipped, ready to flee; then his nerves deign to inform him that he is unhurt, and suddenly cold, so he opens his mouth, ready to berate; and then finally the rest of his indolent senses are roused, and show him Stevie, oblivious, and Sam, horrified, both carrying eye-blisteringly colored squirt guns, so he closes and his mouth and narrows his eyes, ready to seethe.

He does so.

"God Kurt, uh," Sam begins, infuriatingly bashful, "we're so sorry—aren't we Stevie?" he says, momentarily stern, "and it's just we didn't see you until—" He addresses Stevie: "I _told_ you not to go near the pool chairs!" Stevie has the sense to look bashful, too (must have learned from his damn brother), and then mumbles a quick "sorry" before ungracefully removing himself from the situation by trotting quickly toward the pool. Sam glances after him and scratches the back of his head. "Um—yeah. Sorry."

"You're late," Kurt snaps, ringing water from the tail of his shirt, and when Sam looks at him blankly he adds, "You missed your cue." He feels a hint of petty triumph. Let Sam be confused—serves him right.

Sam looks around as though expecting an explanation to be posted nearby. "—Oh," he says, without confidence. A moment passes. "—What?"

The shock of the water has left Kurt's system, and now that he has relaxed slightly being sour longer amuses him. He shakes his head and straightens his neck. "Never mind. It's fine." He gently pats his scalp to ensure that his hair is in place. Sam doesn't look fully mollified, and Kurt feels a little guilty, which, he is quick to remind himself, makes no sense. Still: "Actually," Kurt admits, "it felt good." There is another awkward pause, and Kurt shuffles his feet. "It's hot," Kurt clarifies, and immediately flushes. Captain obvious much?

Sam looks at him quizzically, but then just nods. "Yep," he confirms. "—so... why aren't you swimming, then?"

He opens his mouth to issue a deflective answer, but stops himself. It is a fair question, he realizes.

Kurt has always been shy about his body. He has not swam in earnest since reaching an age at which wearing a shirt in the pool became the subject for inquiry or ridicule. Normally, he avoids even exposing his legs; that shorts are rarely components of the sort of fashion at which he excels is a fine excuse for never wearing them, but in truth his insecurities are more to blame. He does not have—just to pick an apropos example—Sam's torso, or his tan, for that matter, which, Kurt is thankful to note, looks genuine. And comprehensive. Kurt clears his throat. His haze of lust has not been fully dissuaded by the chill of the water, and his eyes take in details of Sam's body that he has never before permitted them to observe. He does not feel guilty about it. Feeling guilty, he reasons, would be evidence that he is doing something worth feeling guilty about. For instance: There is nothing wrong in noting that Sam's calves are surprisingly slender—nowhere near stick-like, but not the bulging appendages he might have suspected, given Sam's (he clears his throat again) physique. Likewise: It is perfectly natural to note that Sam's smile, forming no doubt in response to Kurt's extended hesitation, blooms at his temples, the slightest flicker of skin, and then moves in two directions simultaneously, at once slipping to nestle in one of the deep corners of his mouth and rising to weigh down his eyebrows, so that the whole event seems expertly choreographed, down to the slight upward tilt of his chin that draws Kurt's eyes down the slide of his neck to his collar bone, and the faint rise and fall of his chest, where muscles that Kurt never knew existed are subtly hinted at; and with Sam's inhale he follows the air down his arteries and over the hills covering his stomach to the band of his swimsuit, and though at the last minute he tries to convince himself that he is evaluating the garment's sartorial appeal, the first whine of guilt stirs his brain and he snaps (too conspicuously, he is sure) his eyes back to Sam's and tries to remember what it is he is supposed to be saying.

"Hi?" Sam asks through his smile.

"Hi," Kurt responds dumbly. Sam does this to him, or perhaps he does this to Sam: They become awkward together. Not uncomfortable, per se; neither avoids interacting with the other, to Kurt's knowledge, and it is a friendly sort of awkwardness, but Kurt has never been able to pinpoint exactly why it arises.

But as to Sam's question. He wants to swim, he is surprised to discover, not only in fact to swim but to risk drawing glances for something other than his wardrobe, for, he dares to hope, a more intrinsic physical appeal. It is not exactly that his new desire has given him greater confidence; it has rather enabled within him recklessness, a subtle longing for a sharp thrill. He knows that it is somewhat pathetic to consider this little act reckless but does not care. "You're right, I should. Swim, I mean."

"Mhm." Sam glances down at his squirt gun quickly, still smiling, and Kurt wonders if he should revert to acting affronted in preemptive self-defense. "What?" Sam asks, in response to some face Kurt doesn't realize he's making. There is mischief in his voice.

"Don't even think about it, Evans," Kurt says, taking a step back.

"Think about what?"

"Think about what you're thinking about."

"I'm just thinking about the weather," Sam assures innocently, glancing upwards. "Looks like it might rain, don't you think?"

Kurt almost looks up but remembers from his earlier gazing that only timid clouds streak the sky. "No," he says firmly, though for some reason he feels on the verge of laughter. He feels tense and bubbly. Playful. Blaine's friendshipmore than anything unlocked his sense of playfulness months before they were even dating, but recently in Blaine's presence he has found that playfulness hard to exercise, over-wary of the fragility of new romances. "No," Kurt repeats, gazing over the rim of his sunglasses. "It looks like it will be blissfully precipitation-free until I get to the pool."

Sam's smile flickers to a pout and back in an instant, and Kurt makes the mistake of smiling back after the brief glimmer of adorably petulant disappointment. "I'll kill you, Sam," he warns, but as he says it his smile grows, and he leans on his back leg, ready to flee.

"Don't know what you're talking a _bout—_ " Sam lunges forward and fires but Kurt dodges with a little shriek and takes off across the small public lawn adjoining the community center. Though he grapples to contain it, laughter slips from his throat as he dashes.

He doesn't need to look back to know that Sam is on his trail, and he feels a dusting of spray graze his arm. "So unfair!" he shouts over his shoulder. "Unarmed civilian! Unarmed civilian!"

He hears Sam's laugh and it's closer than he anticipates. He ducks to one side and quickly scans the pool area—he notes that Stevie has left his own weapon rather dangerously at the edge of the pool, and though he makes for it quickly his hesitation costs him a dry shoulder. When he nearly leaps onto an oblivious sunbathing Santana the lifeguard on duty squawks at him to Stop Running, but with a belted apology he ignores her, crouching low to grab the squirt gun, flinging his sunglasses at his chair and fleeing the crowded area as Finn and Artie cheer the chase, dismissing the obvious euphemisms that tempt his tongue as he pumps pressure into the chamber so that when he again reaches the grass he is ready to turn, and he does, panting, and pulls the trigger with a surge of victory, watches a startled but grinning Sam recoil in anticipation, only to hear the sputtering hiss of air issue from the nozzle—it's only now that he registers the weight of the gun—far too light to be holding enough water—and he yelps as Sam recovers, dropping the weapon and sprinting—and it occurs to him in a melancholic flash that he is running from someone of whom he is not terrified for the first time in years.

And yet—it's not fear that tremors his bones, certainly, but some cousin of anxiety lodges in his ribcage, a feeling like sea sickness or vertigo. Later, when he is more familiar with the feeling, he will think of it as a fume, a sulfurous scent rising from the flames within him lighted by the sparks in Sam's eyes he does not yet know he is recognizing.

He doubles back and by instinct is drawn to the slate wall he has contemplated so many times before, still dappled with evolving notes of light. It belongs to a room no longer standing, the sole remnant of some private chamber torn mostly apart during the process of adapting the old building for its current use. There is no logical reason for its presence. It adjoins one blank face of the community center and runs parallel to a wire fence bolstered by thick and poorly-kempt shrubbery, so that it forms a three-sided nook well-suited to games of hide-and-seek but little else.

He knows he is dooming himself to a dead end but as he nears the wall's alcove he runs faster. He feels giddy at the thought of rendering his fate inevitable, of defining, for once, where a chase will end. He lets his feet come to rest in the grass and turns.

Sam's blast hits him square in the chest and the cold invigorates him, ripples down his limbs. He gasps and to his surprise feels a strange grin poised at his lips. He tries and fails to shape it into a death glare.

Sam, smiling through heavy breaths, keeps the gun aimed at him. "I know what you're thinking," he quotes, a passable Clint Eastwood, "did he fire six cups, or only five?" Kurt giggles nervously, pressing his palms over his wet shirt, waiting for Sam's shyness to descend as it always does, or for his own sense of propriety to knock the sense of joy out of the situation. Neither occurs. "You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?" Sam continues, taking a few steps forward. "Well, do ya, punk?"

Kurt feels the danger of the situation, feels as though he is perched at the edge of a cliff, and that if Sam takes another step toward him he will surely fall. That all hard evidence points to the fact that Sam is straight is irrelevant; he feels reckless, titillated, blissfully stupid. "Yes," he answers coyly, still playing with his shirt. He thinks his hands might be shaking.

He is not imagining it: There is a foreign energy between them, a vivid, clouded energy, and Sam feels it, too. There is doubt and intensity in his eyes. "Got you pretty good," he says, voice not entirely steady.

"I guess so," Kurt says. There is a short pause.

"You're wet," Sam says.

"Mhm," Kurt says.

The tip of Sam's tongue draws a slow arc along one side (Kurt is too distracted to register which) of his upper lip, and as he speaks his face darkens to red. "You should, uh." He hesitates, and pulses the tips of his free fingers up twice. "For comfort."

"Should what?" His words quiver.

"You know." Sam is probably less readable than he seems—the nameless tangle of sensations Kurt sees tied round his every breath are probably half-projected, his own illusory knots manifest. But half-projected means half-real, at least, and Kurt is nearly sure he is not inventing tension from nowhere.

"Should what?" Kurt repeats more firmly.

"Should—" Sam starts, and takes the last step forward. His voice goes quiet, strained. "Should take it off." Kurt shudders; Sam drops the water gun and lifts one of his hands quickly, clumsily, to the rim of Kurt's shirt. His thoughts recede until they are barely ghosts haunting the valley of his mind.

"Yes," Kurt manages to agree, the noise barely an exhale. Sam is still, so he nods once, in case he has not been heard.

Kurt doesn't move; he wants Sam to move. And finally Sam does move, slowly. He watches Kurt's eyes constantly, his own eyes desperate not to be recognized-Kurt senses that he will recoil at the slightest noise and so holds his breath. He feels two things in the unsure motion of Sam's slowly rising hands, beyond the expanding cool touch of raw shade against his damp skin: First that he is tremendously concerned at making Kurt uncomfortable, and second that he is frantically clinging to the idea that Kurt does not realize this gesture is more than friendly. A blind man, of course, could see otherwise, but Kurt plays along by doing nothing, by merely holding Sam's deer-in-the-headlights gaze, that falters only once, to glance down in a stunned way at his hand.

And then with a fierce pull Kurt is lost in wet fabric, accosted by the acid scent of chlorine, and he brings high his hands to help remove his shirt. He has an instant of freedom before his world reduces to two eyes and he feels wide lips pressing against his own.

The transition is so sudden and so absurd and so wonderful that for a moment Kurt is convinced that he has wandered into one of his own fantasies, and he will claim to himself later that this is why he reacts the way he does with no thought whatsoever of his boyfriend: He kisses back.

He lets his hands ride Sam's spine up to his shoulders, lets them grip hard and test the skin and muscle of his back—lets, because he is no longer in control of his body beyond Yes or No. Sam's mouth is open and their tongues like mating dragonflies dive and cling together, their chests press like tectonic plates and send quakes through Kurt's soles. Almost before his skin discloses the touch of Sam's hands on his sternum, interlacing in his hair, pressing stars into his sides, he is against the wall, legs raised slightly, so that he feels Sam just beneath him.

And with his bare back against the slate he feels as though he is a part of the wall's music, allegro, dissonant, every muted moan sharp and muffled grunt flat, his skin creased by the rock into measures as his heart beats sixteenths and his mind holds a hollow rest.

He can breathe, suddenly, and feels Sam drill bruises into his neck, and without looking he knows that Sam's fingers have locked a dire trajectory, one that demands more than anything he issue a No order to his wild impulses, that every ounce of sanity left in him scolds. But his raging lungs are bellows and cinders of lust smoke out his conscience, and he waits for the touch, waits and waits and waits and—

"Sammy!"

It goes without saying that Kurt would never harm a child, but sin breeds sin, after all, and his first urges flirt with the tenements of wrath. Sam bounces away from him, and even the summer air feels cold. Sam is sunset red and looks bewildered and ecstatic, charged, disheveled. Young.

Stacie approaches, glowering, and as Kurt's libido begins to settle it occurs to him to feel gripping, white-hot fear. They are in public. They are _very_ in public. If Stacie has seen anything she will not shut up. He knows how kids are, or imagines he does.

Forget the potential beatings that might follow for the both of them should some of his classmates hear about this. The thought that truly terrifies him is that his friends are notorious gossips.

Blaine will find out.

His brain shreds to static.

"What's up Stace?" Sam asks, infinitely calmer, and Kurt wants to hurt him. It is a simple impulse. How—why did he—a rage at Sam's recklessness, his indifference, boils in him. This risk has not been shared equally. This is—

"Quinn said to check on you to make sure you weren't assaulting Kurt with Aquaman references or something," Stacie says, audibly annoyed at having been made to drag herself from her pooltime activities. "Also Stevie won't leave me alone, play super soldiers with him again." She leaves, looking bored.

Relief spills over Kurt, as though, expecting a tsunami, he has been lapped at by a gentle cresting swell. He will never make this mistake again. He feels like cheering. He is about to skip—actually skip—from the alcove when Sam interrupts: "Uh, Kurt, you uh." He is still red, but no longer sunset. His skin looks the pale crimson of Eve's apple.

And Kurt hates that his blood still rushes at the sight.

Sam is pointing timidly to his own neck, and Kurt knows he is reddening, now, too, in realization. He covers his throat automatically and retrieves his shirt, pulling it on despite the swampy smell of earth and pool water it has gathered.

"Hey uh," Sam stammers, and Kurt is appalled that he found the sloppy speech cute only moments before. "D'you wanna, you know, maybe go somewhere and talk? I have a gift card for the Lima Bean that somebody tipped—"

"Don't," Kurt says, and lowers his head, ready to bee-line for his beach chair to recover his sandals and shades, ready to dig his phone from his vehicle's cup holder and purge himself through Blaine's voice. He will tell him everything. He must tell him everything.

"—bu—what do you mean _don't_?" Sam sounds genuinely confused. "Don't what?"

Kurt cannot keep viciousness from his tone. "I mean _don't_. Nothing—nothing happened and I swear if you ever tell anyone that—"

"I-I won't," Sam says, but too much is happening in Kurt's head for him to really listen; his relief has faded to a semi-panicked nausea. He will tell Blaine everything, and Blaine will be mad but will understand, because he is Blaine, and no one else will ever know, and today will never have happened.

"—that this happened I will—I will—" His head is still lowered and he won't look up. "I don't know," he says. It is perhaps the most threatening sound he has ever heard himself make. He feels like crying. He supposes that Sam has been stunned into silence, and in a few minutes he is sitting in his car and after Blaine tells him how the park attendant let him ride the Avalanche coaster six times in a row he asks Kurt how his day was and Kurt tells him it was fine, and nothing else.


	2. The Tautology of Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Just drop it, ok?" Sam sits up again. He does not want to be condescended to. "It's fine." He does his best to sound sincere but doesn't even fool himself.
> 
> "No, it's not, and I feel like I need to explain—"
> 
> "You don't. You don't," Sam repeats. "Of course you're not... obligated to have enjoyed it, or whatever, you can shut me down all you want. Just—you don't have to trivialize my feelings."
> 
> "I wasn't trivializing them!" Kurt insists, vexation creasing his face. "I was just trying to explain. You can't understand—" He shakes his head and reconsiders his words. "It's just not the same. You don't have anything at stake. I could lose Blaine over this, if he found out." He sighs. "And it's not that I'm not... flattered, that you chose me to... experiment with. But these sorts of things aren't just an experiment to me, this is—"
> 
> "Whoa, hey, whoa," Sam interrupts. "This isn't an experiment."
> 
> Kurt looks at him with a pitying smile and puts a hand on his chest. "Sam. Of course it is."
> 
> So that's it. This again. The goddamn tautology of Sam rears its ugly head.

When he was younger Sam like many children would play games on shopping mall tiles, avoiding the menacing lava channels or bottomless pits that lurked invisibly beneath squares of plane white with daring leaps and careful strides. These days he sometimes helps Stevie devise elaborate courses between storefronts and over tables in the food court but mostly the colored patterns remind him of tablature, each shining stripe of seaweed green or ocean blue really the patinaed bronze of an old guitar string. His feet become fingers as he paces the ceramic, and he finds himself walking chords to match his mood: Stubby isosceles triangles on their sides form airy Ds that make him think of trickling streams and happy sighs; stairway shapes that alternate gentle-steep as they climb to the left are Cs, heaven-harking cataracts; a quick pair of huddled steps alone on either side raise the deepwater darkness of E minor.

All well and good when he is by himself, but if the looks Mercedes is giving him are any indication, not something best done in polite company.

"Sorry," he thinks to mutter shyly, stopping one note short of the warm arm of A major. In his head it hangs unfinished, a pensive sus 2nd, truer to his mindset, he supposes.

Mercedes' eyebrows, lifted in skepticism, fall and she smiles. Like always her smile comforts him the way his mom's cooking does, makes the world feel smaller. "Naw, don't be. It's cute. Whatever the hell it is you're doing." She takes his arm and pats it affectionately. "Just maybe save it for when there aren't so many people around."

"Yeah." She keeps hold of his arm as they walk, so he doesn't check his phone for the time. The damn thing is prepaid, and only barely, but it's something, and given that his only watch counts the minutes via spinning Star Fleet insignia it's a useful timepiece for social situations. His eyes are no longer busy counting frets so he scans nearby shops for wall clocks. Over some jewelry clerk's desk he spots a sleek analog that reads 8:00, or close enough. Later than he'd thought. The nearly vertical minute hand looks to him like an advancing shark fin and for all it sets his pulse racing it might as well be.

Mercedes looks at him sideways. "Are you ok?" She releases his arm and tugs gently on one of her new earrings, a hoop so large Sam half expects to see Master Chief chasing Covenant along its flat interior. "You've been acting kind of funny all week." She glances down at his feet. "More so than normal, I mean. Plus we've been here what, an hour, and you haven't quoted me a single line from _Dawn of the Dead_."

Sam shrugs. His face is a poor liar, and so to communicate blankness he thinks of nothing, lets his neurons ricochet off any memories that threaten to crystallize and refract his thoughts into visible emotion. He lets that unresolved chord echo deep in the mine of his mind. "It's been a long week."

"Why did you want to come here, anyway? You hate shopping." He is grateful for the way she phrases that—he _hates_ shopping, not he _cannot afford_ shopping. He checks his hair in a store window and smooths a wrinkle out of the nicest shirt he owns.

"Just needed to get out of the house." Out of the _room_ sounds pathetic, so he says house. Sue him. They are passing the food court, and he swallows, putting his hands in his pockets so that Mercedes can't see them ball into nervous fists. "I'm hungry, mind if we sit down somewhere?"

She "mmm"s an affirmative like the uncertain groan of a wood floor, and though Sam knows she has not accepted the deflection he moves quickly toward a gray table beneath the fibrous leaves of an artificial ficus and sits facing the restaurant displays so that his eyes can't scan the evening crowd bustling behind him. Instead he looks up, tracing a narrow skylight with his gaze, a gloaming blue river crossed by white beams like bridge girders.

Mercedes sits across from him and tilts her head down so that her confused look comes at him filtered through her bangs. "Uh, blondie? If you're going to eat something, you better hurry. We have to leave in like ten minutes, my dad wants me home by 8:30 to help him sort through periodontal x-rays." She rolls her eyes.

"I'm not hungry," Sam says absently, toying with the plastic tree trunk in front of him. Its skin is hard. His own skin feels hard.

She grimaces and takes one of his hands in both of hers. "Sam what is _up_ with you? Did I do something to offend you, or something?"

Sam frowns. Her words have triggered something, but he cannot put his finger on what or why. For a moment he lets loose those crystals of memory and laces her voice through them. Like prisms they split her statement into its component parts, reveal the rainbow of her emotions: a rusty red certainty that she is not the cause of his funk, a fragile violet worry that she _is_ somehow at fault, a polluted yellow shame at her own insecurity. But the sensations her words rouse—the touch of hot steam, and of subtle disappointment—seem independent of her tone, even of the sound of her voice.

"Sam?"

"No—no, of course not," he says, shaking his head, partly to sync with his assurance and partly to clear his thoughts. He shows energy in his eyes and with effort centers his focus on her. "You've been great, Mercedes, and I really am fine, I'm just tired. There's just a lot on my mind, and I promise next week I'll be—I'll—Mercedes?"

She is squinting at something over Sam's shoulder, and before he can turn to look himself she snatches her hands back to her lap and with a startled face says softly, "Be cool, be cool, be co—Heeey!" Her wide smile is impressively convincing.

When he does finally turn his head and see Kurt he is not sure whether to smile or nod or what, and if Kurt's face, frozen in mid-greeting, is any indication, neither is he. So Sam settles for merely looking. His next decision, then: Where to look? Part of him aches to wax flirtatious, to let his eyes gnaw gently on the triangle of pale flesh Kurt's collar reveals, or ride the inseams of his jeans like railroad tracks. Part of him remembers nothing but Kurt's harsh timidity, his bright menace and rattled retreat, and urges Sam to keep his scrutiny chaste. Part of him feels childishly vindictive, hurt by Kurt's relentless refusal to acknowledge his existence, to answer his jumbled texts or return his friendly calls or show up anywhere he knows that Sam may be, and wants to stare disinterestedly past him the way he does when people bitch about late pizza deliveries. Ultimately he compromises. With a casual glance he peruses Kurt's face like a graphic novel, each feature an individual frame of events: long cheeks that threaten always in Sam's mind to widen at the tug of a smile, ghosted by specters of pink; sculpted hair that he feels reduced to raw material in the memory of his fingers; privileged ears that stand at attention, poised to catch every empyreal pitch Kurt throws their way. "Hey," Sam says.

Kurt's mouth, half-open, closes. "Hi," he manages to reply quietly, expression unreadable. He sits down next to Mercedes, setting his shoulder bag on the bench beside him. "You didn't tell me Sam was coming," he says, doing a decent job of sounding pleasant.

"Oh," Mercedes says nonchalantly, "we just ran into each other. In the parking lot." Her eyes flash once in Sam's direction, which Sam chooses to interpret as _Yes, fine, we need to have a brainstorming session to come up with less repetitive excuses for being seen together, but if you say a damn thing about it you're going to wake up in an alley somewhere with a headache and only one kidney_. It has never been clear to Sam exactly why Mercedes is so dead-set on keeping their relationship a secret. Her standard excuse—that once a relationship goes public, drama is inevitable, especially given their group of friends, not to mention the fact that Sam has made out with or been crushed on by half the Glee club—is a good one, to be sure. But he senses there is something else, too. She has never said so directly, but it is clear that she feels, or did feel, at any rate, cut off from and by Kurt's interactions with Blaine; Sam wonders if this secret is a form of small revenge, consciously or otherwise.

His musings are cut short as Kurt's lip twitches like a fish dancing on dry ground. "What were you doing at the mall, Sam?" he asks.

Mercedes' smile falters. "Sam was just, uh, picking up some things—" Her forehead creases her head comes forward. "Wait, did you say I didn't _tell_ you Sam was going to be here?"

Kurt takes his eyes off Sam and looks at her as though he does not understand the question. Sam holds his breath. When Kurt is silent, Mercedes continues: "I didn't tell you _I_ was going to be here."

"Yes, you did," Kurt says, his mouth caught between a bemused smile and a worried frown. He pulls out his phone and reads: "Hey white boy, we should 'chill,' meet me at the mall food court at 8."

It is Mercedes' turn to look confused. "I didn't send you that."

Kurt is still staring at his phone, though, looking puzzled. "White _doy_ ," he corrects to himself, and narrows his eyes.

Sam decides to study the fake tree again.

"Well whatever," Mercedes says, shaking her head. "Maybe you've got the wrong number in there under my name. We have to go, though, my dad wants me home at 8:30 and I still have to drop off Sam. Uh—'cause I said I'd give him a ride."

In his peripheral vision Sam sees Kurt's head turn toward Mercedes. "What?" Mercedes asks him.

"Mercedes, it's ten after 8, there's no way you're going to make it."

"Pff, it is not," she says, glancing down at her watch. "It's not even 8 yet." There's a pause and then Kurt holds out his phone. "—huh—aw what the hell?" she says, leaping to her feet. "Stupid cheap-ass watch! Sam we got to go, my dad is going to killll meeee..."

Sam swallows, and works up the courage to break his staring contest with the ficus. "Hey Mercedes, why doesn't Kurt just give me a ride? That way you can still make it home on time."

If Kurt's eyes were narrow before, Sam has no word for what they are now. "Well look how that worked out," he says. Sam does his best to pretend the waves of animosity shooting through his bones like radiation are Kurt's way of showing his appreciation for how downright clever Sam is.

Mercedes puts a hand on Kurt's shoulder, and with an agitated voice pleads, "Could you Kurt? I'm sooo sorry about this, but you know how my dad gets. I was late for church last week and he made me scrub cuspidors all afternoon."

"Of course," Kurt replies, his death glare never wavering. "My pleasure."

"Oh thank you thank you thank you," she says, grabbing his head and kissing him on the cheek with an audible "mwah." She hesitates, and then gives Sam a shy wave, a smile, and a "See you later" before hustling out of sight.

Kurt's expression doesn't change, so Sam taps his fingers on the tabletop and smiles patiently. "I was having trouble getting a hold of you." It's funny—now that Kurt is here, and they are alone, Sam's nerves, though still tightly coiled, feel less poised to strike down his heart than they do charged with potential energy.

"That's because we have nothing to talk about."

Sam shrugs. "K." He is not going to fight him, not yet, and his acquiescence has its intended effect: Kurt's ire is partially disarmed. With a deep exhale Kurt breaks eye contact, hands idly spinning the table's salt shaker so that it twirls like Stacie did back when his parents could still afford her dance lessons. Sam leans back in his chair and stretches. "Well. You want anything to eat? Any stores you want to poke your head in?"

Kurt snorts, and still staring at the dancing shaker he smiles in an exasperated way. "No."

G. Two short steps, right-left, and then a lunge forward, an ebullient gallop, the most major of major chords. He feels faint as his whole body tries to smile. Sam is caught so completely off guard by the sheer volume of affection that suddenly brims in his chest at this simple response that he tries to breath in twice at the same time and hiccups loudly, startling himself and Kurt, too, who flinches and spills salt all over the table.

For a moment they both stare down at the messy curve of white crystals, transfixed in surprise. Then Sam hiccups again and they break into kiddish laughter, suddenly tense and amused by everything. Kurt brings a bent knuckle to the table, hunched and mischievous, and flicks a few granules in Sam's direction. Sam holds his breath until the urge to hiccup fades, and then lets out a puff of air, spraying Kurt's bare forearms with salt that catches in his rolled-up sleeves. Kurt giggles the way he had at the pool, and Sam dissects the sound in ways he was too distracted to before: It reminds him of a skipping stone whose ripples are lost in trembling water, and the glow in Sam's stomach deepens to a slow burn, and he feels again the bristle of shaded summer grass against his ankles, and when Kurt grabs the brown shaker and moves to pepper him Sam is ready, grabs Kurt's wrist and feels his heartbeat against his thumb, is mildly startled at Kurt's strength as he pushes forward until Sam remembers with strange clarity his first sighting of Kurt, dancing in goofy sunglasses and black fingerless gloves, remembers the shape of his arms, and then the feel of them, last week, when his eyes were locked with Kurt's and useless besides, strong and sure like—

A mother at a nearby table loudly clears her throat, scowling at their ruckus, and Kurt sobers quickly. He pulls his hand back, sets down his weapon and pulls a napkin from the table's dispenser to wipe the table clean. His wide smile shrivels and he clears his throat.

Sam's breath is still coming strangely, and he feels cheated, robbed of a moment. He tweezes grains between his nails and blows them at Kurt, but he receives only a brief strained smile in response. "We should go," Kurt says, rising, and the irrational anger that shadows interrupted lust thickens Sam's blood, so that when he follows suit he feels heavy and grim.

Kurt is silent and looks straight ahead as they walk the gauntlet of late-night shoppers and loitering teens to the mall exit and then through the bug-clogged cones of yellow light reaching from parking lot streetlamps. The cool twilight dims but does not snuff out the indeterminate fire of Sam's emotions. When he climbs into the passenger seat of Kurt's car he smells leather and oil blended with Kurt's pheromones and feels slightly dizzy. Kurt turns the keys and cold air steadies him.

"I'm sorry I dragged you out here," Sam says, planning to guilt Kurt back out of his shell with niceties, but his last words are drowned out by the sudden blaring of the stereo. Sam doesn't know the song, but it has an electronic feel to it, a neon beat. He can't help himself; he pumps his arms and sways his shoulders in an exaggerated rhythm, smiling sideways. Immediately after he begins a sudden fear takes him that Kurt will read his moves as mockery or, worse, a sincere effort at breaking it down, but by the time Kurt's killed the song his musical laughter is weaving a far superior rhythm through the evening hush.

"You're such a dork," he says, and Sam feels like it's the greatest complement he's ever received.

Kurt puts the car in gear and turns down the AC. "What is it?" Sam asks, leaning forward to adjust his seat (Finn, he assumes, requires all this extra leg room). "The song, I mean."

"Oh, just something Blaine gave me to listen to," he says with a dismissive wave. "It's… fun, I suppose."

Sam tries not to smirk too obviously. "Doesn't really sound like your thing."

Kurt shrugs one shoulder and looks over the other as he backs out of narrow the parking space. "I don't _dis_ like it. I just... dislike it," he says with a guilty smile. Once Kurt is no longer distracted by driving maneuvers, Sam bouncily rehashes a few choice dance moves and Kurt chuckles again. When they trickle out, he adds, "And… I'm not sorry I got 'dragged out.'" He half-shrugs again. "It was weird not seeing you."

Sam figures that's as close to "I missed you" as Kurt is going to get, and as he watches Kurt's wrist (what a goddamn wrist, thin and powerful, crossed by graceful tendons like the prongs of a tuning fork, shining in the transient light) twitch slightly to nudge down the lever of the turn signal, he nods and says before he can chicken out, "That was fun, at the pool."

Inertia locks Sam in a shell of space as the car jerks forward, and then propels him forward when the breaks engage. He braces himself with two hands on the dash as Kurt slams a palm into the steering wheel. "Damn it, Sam! Things were going so well, why did you have to—agh!"

Sam did not exactly expect Kurt to spontaneously offer to relive the memory, but the force of Kurt's reaction is disorienting, and Sam feels the tower of his confidence sway precariously. For the first time, he unguardedly acknowledges the possibility that his perception of the chemistry between them is entirely one-sided. He feels vulnerable, abashed, and so he cannot keep the edge from his voice when he says, louder than he means to, "What do you mean, why did I have to?"

"I mean—I told you to forget it! Remember? And you said—"

"I said I wouldn't go announcing it around town, I didn't say I'd forget it!" Sam pivots his body toward Kurt so that the other boy cannot avoid his eyes. "I don't _want_ to forget it, Kurt—" (Kurt winces at the sound of his name) "—and I don't believe for a second that you do either, and if—"

"Well you're wrong." Kurt's voice is hard. "Ok? You're wrong. I do want to forget it, because—" Kurt's voice begins to tremble, and the vibrations further unbalance Sam, shake tears into a glaze over his eyes, open cracks which parch his skin of sensation. Kurt makes a groaning noise. "God, Sam, why don't you understand that thinking about _that_ , that the thought of _that_ is harder on me than it is on you?"

Sam hates the feeling that he is not being taken seriously and projects his frustration as volume. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"'What does that mean, What does that mean'—do I have to spell out everything for you?" Kurt says, voice strained and venomous. The fragment of Sam's mind still unconsumed by doubt assures in a whisper that Kurt does not mean it this way, but all Sam can hear are old taunts that have rotted in a swampy corner of his brain, memories of reading essays aloud to hostile classrooms, snickers that grate his morale into ribbons to be stolen by the dark breeze of self-loathing. "You fucking idiot," is what he hears, and he shuts up and turns toward the door.

A moment passes in hurt silence before Sam can bring himself to say neutrally, "I'll call my dad, he can give me a ride."

He is reaching for the door handle when the chrome shriek of a car horn jolts the air and they collectively realize that Kurt is still idling in the mall's right turn exit lane. Flustered, Kurt jerkily accelerates onto the street and cruises forward. Scenes of action heroes barrel rolling out of speeding automobiles flash through Sam's head, but ultimately he sulks into his seatbelt and presses his forehead against the window, enjoying with mild masochism the thud of his skull on the cool glass as Kurt's wheels graze potholes and stumble over gravel roads.

Sam's stewing is on the brink of becoming deliciously indulgent when Kurt finally says, "I didn't mean to imply that you're dumb, Sam. I don't think—"

"Just drop it, ok?" Sam sits up again. He does not want to be condescended to. "It's fine." He does his best to sound sincere but doesn't even fool himself.

"No, it's not, and I feel like I need to explain—"

"You don't. You don't," Sam repeats. "Of course you're not... _obligated_ to have enjoyed it, or whatever, you can shut me down all you want. Just—you don't have to trivialize my feelings."

"I wasn't trivializing them!" Kurt insists, vexation creasing his face. "I was just trying to explain. You can't understand—" He shakes his head and reconsiders his words. "It's just not the same. You don't have anything at stake. I could lose Blaine over this, if he found out." He sighs. "And it's not that I'm not... flattered, that you chose me to... _experiment_ with. But these sorts of things aren't just an experiment to me, this is—"

"Whoa, hey, whoa," Sam interrupts. "This isn't an experiment."

Kurt looks at him with a pitying smile and puts a hand on his chest. "Sam. Of course it is."

So that's it. This again. The goddamn tautology of Sam rears its ugly head.

He is somewhat embarrassed whenever he remembers that it was through superhero comics that he originally discovered his sexuality, though it was almost a full year after he began crushing on Iron Lad that the implications of his infatuation occurred to him on a conscious level. By then he had real-life targets for his attraction, and he can still evoke with perfect clarity his first nervous confession of homosexual desire, delivered to his mother almost five years ago. Her face is effervescent when he admits to having to a thing for one of his classmates, and he can tell that she is excited to gossip, ready to tease him in a friendly way. "Who is she?" she asks.

"It's..." he begins, excited himself to finally be free of his secret even as anxiety makes his ears ring. "It's on a boy."

It is as though someone has taken a picture of her face and edited the light from her eyes. "What?"

His throat is dry. "I like a boy," he repeats timidly.

When she is rendered speechless he tries to explain that he still is attracted to girls, but this only makes things worse. "Then—then why can't you have a crush on a girl?" She assures him so many times that she is merely concerned about him living a difficult life that he begins to think she is trying to convince herself more than she is him.

He tries to explain it, that he is like everyone else—completely unable to influence who it is he falls for. Still she is befuddled. He tries an example: Wouldn't she have had an easier life if she'd fallen in love with a millionaire? Why didn't she make herself do that? But it's no use. To her, to everyone he's ever told, sexuality is ruled by the most basic form of tautology, a statement that by definition must be true: Something is the case, or it is not. Their false tautology for Sam reads: Sam is either straight, or he is gay. Pick one, Sam, and don't tell your pastor if you choose the latter.

So in the car with Kurt he vents: "No, Kurt, I'm not experimenting, and don't try to tell me that I am."

"But—have you ever done this sort of thing with a guy before? How can—"

"Had you ever done anything with a guy before Blaine? Does that mean you were just 'experimenting' when you kissed him?" Kurt opens his mouth to respond but Sam doesn't let him. "I've liked guys for years, and I've liked girls for years, and no it is not a phase, and no I don't plan on ever 'making up my mind' about it." He turns away; he does not want to see incomprehension play out on those features. "And for what it's worth, I _do_ have something to lose, because I'm dating Mercedes, so get off your high horse."

Once again, Sam underestimates the intensity of Kurt's reaction, and nearly hits his head on the roof of the car when Kurt exclaims, " _What_?"

Sam scratches his shoulder and coughs once. "Uh. Yeah, since prom."

Dozens of questions battle along Kurt's eyebrows, the bridge of his nose, the plane of his jaw, before one ekes its way out: "Then what the hell were you doing making out with me?"

Kurt's loss for words helps Sam regain his footing, so to speak, and he is able to smile slightly as he points out, "I could ask you the same question."

Kurt has the gall to look affronted. "You kissed me. I was shocked. The response was automatic."

"Oh, come _on_ ," Sam insists. "Like you weren't begging for it." He pitches his voice high and rations his breath, filling his eyes with exaggerated desire. "'Should what, Sam? Should what?'"

Kurt's face progresses through four shades of pink as Sam watches. "I don't sound like that," he grumbles meekly, and spends a few moments fingering one of his sleeves. "—You're really dating her?"

Sam is mildly confused, not by what Kurt says but by his tone. He sounds... _hopeful_? Sam cannot decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, so he defaults to the truth and nods.

"Mm." Kurt lets his free hand glide across the dashboard, slowly, back and forth, like a caress. Sam shivers.

Kurt clears his throat. "Well," he says, chagrined. "I'm sorry for... assuming things. But you know we can't ever do anything like that again. It's—it wouldn't be right."

Sam feels minor disappointment, as though his heart, buoyed on high water, is sinking temporarily with the tide. But the part of him capable of delaying satisfaction is shouting tentative victory cheers ("Maybe Later!"). In half an hour he has helped Kurt move from "It never happened" to "It wouldn't be right." He is not sure how to quantify this progress but will do his damnedest to help it continue. Sam is nothing if not determined.

For now, though, he voices agreement. "Yeah." He tilts his gaze back to window and opens it with the push of a button. After a moment, he dares to add defiantly, "It was still pretty damn good though."

Over the rush of early night air Sam is shocked to hear Kurt demurely chirp "Yes." He swallows and focuses on the dark.

Phantasmal trees hint their presence with fleeting silhouettes beyond the constellation of streetlights that wind serendipitously, it seems, with the lonely road. The sky smells rich with prenatal rain but looks purple-black and empty; false stars hide the real ones, Sam thinks, and struggles to map this insight onto his life. Astronomy, again. He thinks of Quinn and paper mache planets, and draws a long line from then to now. And a much shorter line, from that distant moment, the origin of his duet with Quinn, to his reluctantly aborted duet with Kurt. _Did I do something to offend you?_ Yes—in the shower, when Kurt had broken things off. Sam's own words. Did it mean something, to hear his own words mirrored so long after the fact? A third line links that moment with now, by those words and more importantly by Kurt himself.

An asterism formed by three points, and Sam recognizes it instantly. Two close notes, right-left, and then a long leap forward. G major, sprawled in the heavens. A sign from God if ever he saw one.

His contemplation is interrupted only once, by Kurt, who asks curiously and out of nowhere, "What were you doing with your feet, on our way out of the mall?" Sam turns his head to him, frowning. Kurt looks at him out of the corner of his eye. "The way you were walking. I was half worried you'd hurt yourself as part of your little plot, hoping I'd have to take you to the hospital," he says drily.

Sam feels an itch stretch up the back of his neck and knows he is blushing. He had not realized at the time, but in memory he can feel the chord pounding through him. "Oh, uh. D7."

"What?"

Sam folds his hands together and stares at them. "Nothing."

"D7?" There is no skepticism in his voice, merely curiosity.

"Yeah, um. Like a guitar chord."

He tries to read Kurt's silence but can't. After a few still seconds he hears a faint "hm."

"What?" he asks defensively.

"Oh, nothing," Kurt says pensively. Sam is not going to press it, but a moment later Kurt adds, "It's just I do the same thing. Not the _same_ thing, but." Kurt taps the steering wheel lightly. "Sometimes I read notes in light patterns on walls," he confesses bashfully.

Sam doesn't reply, but he feels goosebumps. As another surge of affection threatens to inflate him like a balloon he shifts his shoulder so that his arm rests against Kurt's elbow, and Kurt doesn't push him away.

In a few minutes Kurt parks in the motel lot, oddly far from the Evans' room, and at first Sam wonders if Kurt has somehow forgotten its location, or if Sam is being subtly punished by being made to walk the few extra yards. But when he looks at Kurt to raise an eyebrow he finds the boy's attention anchored firmly to a zone of nothing unlit before them, and becomes with truly stupefying speed entranced by the outline of Kurt's stomach moving in and out, his singer's breath defined by the tight cling of his shirt. And his face—Kurt's face defies shadows. The dark cannot confine it. It springs forward from darkness, conquers darkness, is pale luminescence. The impulse to kiss him again, to relive the desperate heat of Kurt's delicate tongue, is nearly overwhelming, and without meaning to Sam leans in, pulled by the deep white of Kurt's magnetic north, until the tip of his nose startles Kurt's cheek and he yelps sharply, turning his face into Sam's and flinching back, eyes wide and lips parted as though holding a note too ineffable for sound.

"—Don't," he mouths, and Sam pours every cold thought he can think over the coals of lust stoking fire in his groin, and manages to forge a sheet of ice to hold down the flames. He pulls back, barely, so barely that he can watch his hypothetical self through this thin layer of ice continue forward, and is darkly jealous of his imagination.

Kurt's breath is hitching like broken clockwork and time loses its normal flow. It is seconds or years before he sits up fully again, and by then Sam has reconstructed with scientific certitude in his mind every smooth detail of Kurt's bare legs, has extrapolated from unsubtle scrutiny the gaps in his knowledge, can taste again the human salt of Kurt's neck. "Do you—" Kurt begins, but his voice cracks. He tries again. "Do you have your phone?"

Sam does not care about his phone. "Yes."

"Can I see it?"

Sam does not understand, but he fetches the item from his pocket with some difficulty, and he does not care if Kurt can see the cause, hopes that Kurt can see the cause.

Kurt takes it and opens it, searching his contacts. "Just—need to make sure you have my number right," he explains, voice more air than tone. Sam does not understand. He has been texting Kurt all week; of course he has Kurt's number right. "Mmhm," Kurt confirms, and spins the phone in his fingers. He smiles nervously, impishly. "Well guess you should go."

Sam knows he is right but hates him for saying so. "I could _not_ ," he suggests. "I could stay here and..."

Kurt shakes his head. "Mm-mm. Bye." He gives a stupid, childish little wave, and Sam can't stop a frustrated grunt from escaping him.

"Fine. Give me my phone."

Kurt shakes his head again, more quickly this time. "Mm-mm."

"Kurt, I need my phone. If Stevie or Stacie or my boss needs to get a hold of me..."

The countertenor shrugs his shoulders with false sympathy. "Too bad," he says, the hint of a giggle bubbling through his words.

"Kurt!" Sam is _not_ in a mood to be toyed with. He snaps out his hand to grab the phone from Kurt but Kurt pulls it out of his reach, laughing with his mouth closed. "Give me—" He tries again, but Kurt is too fast, tossing it to his other hand, and with another growl Sam lunges with his other arm, and Kurt dives backward, laughing, Sam thinks in his rage, dementedly, and their arms tangle like vines and Sam reaching is pressed into the trunk of Kurt's chest, and smells woody cologne, wants to strip him of his bark, and his inability to do so does more than heat his anger, it torrefies it, so that he feels roasted and rich with passion, and Kurt still grinning slips the phone into his pants pocket, and when Sam chases it he meets no resistance, feels his fingers against Kurt's thigh and through the denim of the pocket's interior feels too Kurt's hard shaft, and when Kurt shudders and the lids of his eyes flutter down Sam forgets what it was he was after, does not dare to ask permission as he removes his hand and unbuttons Kurt's jeans, and as the zipper grazes Kurt the boy says, adorably, incredibly, "Oh," and Sam uses one hand to pull Kurt up while the other paws clumsily his pants down, learns the contours of him through his boxers, sinfully tight in the truest sense of the word, a sin against God, and he shucks this last barrier and feels as though he is pulling the red curtain off an unseen work of art; and for all the rapturous length of his prize he finds himself watching the creases of Kurt's cheeks that protest Sam's patience and the quaking orbs closed to the world, and Sam feels fear for a moment, sharp fear, and asks Kurt his own name: "Say my name," he says, and without hesitation Kurt whines "Sam"; "Open your eyes," Sam says, and Kurt does; and when Sam is sure Kurt is thinking of nothing else and no one else he grips Kurt and strokes him long and slow, feels slick sweat moisten his fingers, watches Kurt's pupils dilate, and Sam's revenge for everything, for this whole fucking mess, is not to kiss him; he will not kiss Kurt, dammit, Kurt will kiss _him._ He rubs his thumb around the ridge of Kurt's head and his heart chokes as Kurt moans, and Sam lets his fingers stretch down, and pulls him faster, and watches Kurt watch him, and watches Kurt lean forward.

There.

A scarlet pitch dazes him as Kurt's mouth gently chimes against his bottom lip, and then they are kissing fiercely, and when Kurt's hands pull hard on the fabric of his shirt Sam confesses, still groping Kurt, "I want, I want to, to feel all of you"; and Kurt with both hands grabs his hair and sucks the air from him, and as Sam releases his cock to lift Kurt's shirt over his head he feels those hands suddenly at his waist, feels his shorts forced down and air assault his hips before Kurt's fumbling touch blooms white light through his core, blinding his hearing and deafening his sight. "Kurt," Sam pants, "oh fuck"; and by the way Kurt's fingers haphazardly experiment, caressing him with the backs of his fingernails, his knuckles, wrist and palm, fondling his balls and tickling him up and down, Sam knows in his soul that he is the first Kurt has touched this way, feels harder than ever for this knowledge alone, Kurt's imperfect technique be damned. And he does not care that Kurt lets go when Sam lifts him by bare shoulders to his lap, and their erections press together, and Sam makes a noise without a name as his mouth fills with the flesh of Kurt's chest and his hands ply the svelte curves of Kurt's ass, tease the forbidden territory where he vows with religious conviction one day soon to venture, and as his chest warms, his shirt barraged by thick liquid, he succumbs to blissful friction and comes, too, scarring Kurt's pale skin with warm white.

There is silence and heavy breathing.

Sam worries that Kurt will panic again but he doesn't. As they clean and dress the need for words is comfortably suffocated by psychological haze, the aftermath of craving quenched.

Kurt speaks first, once he is seated again in the driver's seat. "That was nice."

His understatement does nothing to shake the daze of adoration in which Sam finds himself. "You're telling me," Sam says, and puts a hand on Kurt's shoulder, massaging with two fingers. "When, uh. Or I mean, do you want to..."

Kurt looks as though he would be looking stern if he had the energy. "Samuel. You know we can't do that again."

Sam succeeds in not laughing because he is tired. Kurt Hummel, the boy who cried chastity. "Sure." Kurt frowns, clearly trying to gauge Sam's sincerity. "But uh, hey, if this is our last time," Sam asks, "one more kiss isn't going to hurt anybody, right?"

Kurt's frown threatens to lift to a grin but hovers instead in purgatory. "Well. I guess not." Sam is sure that the measured pace at which Kurt leans forward is calculated not to belie his enthusiasm. Their lips meet again and their mouths open, but they work gently together, and Sam feels like crying at how wonderful it feels. When they finally break apart, they wish each other goodnight wearing unsure smiles and add nothing more.

As Kurt drives away, Sam wonders if it is by accident or intention that he has left his phone in Kurt's pocket.

In the parking lot his mental fog condenses to a pure liquid in which his thoughts wade easily and in whose reflection he sees the radiant profile of a dark-haired boy. And he realizes as he walks into the motel room, saturated with these clear swells of feeling and preceded by the vital roar of television cartoons and the mechanical drone of his parents' voices, that he has identified at last and for certain the tautology of Sam, the undeniable truth that haunts his every hour, that soaks into his clothes and rides on his every breath:

He is with Kurt, or he is not.


	3. A Lullaby for Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a light rain pattering the window at his back when his phone shudders and an unfamiliar number boasts on its screen. Against his ear the plastic feels humid, warm.
> 
> "Hello?" he answers.
> 
> "Hey Kurt."
> 
> "Guess you need your phone."
> 
> "Would be nice."
> 
> "Where should..."
> 
> "Maybe the park?"
> 
> "Fine. ...Nothing can happen, Sam."
> 
> "Sure."
> 
> "I mean it."
> 
> "I understand."
> 
> "I'm just bringing you the phone."
> 
> "Right."
> 
> "Why didn't you call your number, instead of mine?"
> 
> "I thought you'd be flattered I knew yours."
> 
> He is right.

The memory comes slowly and in tandem with the spread of daylight that unfolds like a paper fan over his skin, so that Kurt imagines each detail tugged over the horizon by a rope held taught by the rising sun. The cramped dusk returns first: the car chassis packed tight with molecules of dark, repelled here and there by the lit dash and the dirty glow of motel windows pressing in like exhaust fumes. Then the sounds: crickets' muffled summer symphonies and a boy's heavy breathing, impelled by his own low moans. (It occurs to him that he deserves to find the noise embarrassing, but in the sensual aura of dawn he smiles shyly at the thought.) And lastly the feeling itself: the crooked grip of a strong hand, the lukewarm dither of processed air, the sting of brash fire rioting in his mind.

The sensations confuse themselves with the present. He is not used to the feel of hot sheets against his back; in his old room the lambent fingers of morning never stretched to his bedside, and feeling bold and careless he has forgone his pajamas. He feels exposed and alive, and moreover he feels a hot tremor at his groin, and overly conscious of the creak of his bed he drags his hand too slowly up and down his stretched skin and remembers the—the _contact_ , the foreign but familiar landscape of Sam, a painting labeled _Do Not Touch_ and violated by the tips of Kurt's fingers, by the lifelines on his palms, and his ankles stretch and shoulders lock as the images strike him like a dull arrowhead in the core of his chest and he kicks his sheets to his ankles just in time.

He is reaching for tissues, frowning distastefully at the feel of the ejaculate on his hands and stomach, when he is scared stiff by three booming notes that issue from the foot of his bed. By the fourth, he has recognized, bizarrely, the Star Wars Empire theme, tinny and muffled, and frowns in confusion. He wipes his hands clean, identifies the music's source as his laundry hamper, and is mystified for only a moment longer before he recalls his antics with Sam's phone. ( _Really_ , _Kurt?_ he thinks to himself, and keeps his eyes at the horizontal even as he leans down so as not to see his naked body flush at the memory.) He digs Sam's phone out of the pocket of his jeans.

Mercedes' wide smile greets him on the screen, and he hesitates a moment, wondering what the ring tone implies about her relationship with Sam, before lifting it to his ear. "Hello."

A pause. "—who is this?"

He holds the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he returns to his vanity to finish wiping himself down. "Kurt." There is a thrill in saying his name, as though he is a disguised hero pulling the mask from over his face.

" _Ohhh_. It's you. For a sec I was worried Sam was with some other woman. —which, uh, would be fine. I just meant, 'cause there was this girl that he met, who I told him he really shouldn't see. —not because I care who he sees, I mean. It was 'cause of. She—had syphilis. Yeah, that's right, she was all diseased, and you know, I didn't want Sam to catch it. —not for any special reason, just because disease is bad, and uh, health care costs, and it's. The stigma. There's a stigma. And you know how Sam's always concerned with his status, wouldn't want to be called... syphilis... man. People are cruel, there's no understanding—what the hell is so damn funny?"

Kurt can barely breath from laughter he is no longer able to mute. "He told me, Cedes."

"Told you what?" she asks innocently.

"I am shocked and appalled," he continues, "that you didn't tell me yourself. Shocked and appalled." He means to be facetious but discovers as he speaks that he truly is a little surprised, a little offended, a little hurt.

"What are you doing with Sam's phone?" she deflects before he can scold her further, and a brocade of fear threads his throat before he remembers he has a perfectly innocent excuse.

"He left it in my car last night. Did you make it home in time, or are you spending your morning categorizing floss by tensile strength?"

"Ha. No, I was good. —Thanks for taking Blondie, sorry I stranded you with him."

"It was fine. Speaker," he announces, setting the phone on his dresser as he carefully selects an outfit for the day. "He really lets you call him Blondie?"

"I told him he could choose. The hair or the mouth. Ain't no way I could manage not making cracks about both."

Kurt snorts. "So... how are... things, with you two?" Kurt dresses with his usual attention to detail and nothing more, or so he tells himself, ignoring that he has chosen clothes he would have once called edgy and now sees as provocative. His wardrobe is almost entirely well-fitting, but what he now wears grips his skin with a masculine urgency, as though it intuits that its primary purpose is to be removed. He is unaccustomed to thinking of himself as a man—as male, certainly, as a boy, but not as a man—and this helps him hide the truth from himself.

Mercedes answers "They're good!" enthusiastically. But there is condition in her voice, some tell; her words sound bright yellow, but the sharp and bitter smell of wet paint scalds the air.

"Good?" Kurt asks nervously.

"Yeah! I mean, we get along real well, he's a really nice guy."

"But?"

"Why you assume there's a but?"

Kurt smirks shallowly. "I know you can't see me, but—"

"Yeah, yeah, giving me one of your damn looks." She scoffs. "Things really are good. I guess just—you don't want to hear about this."

Kurt's brain is still fuzzy with morning, but he feels pistons and gears warm within him, the machinery of fear humming to life. "Mercedes," is all he says. She suspects Sam is cheating. She is worried that Sam is gay. She—

"Well there hasn't been any heat," she says more quickly than he is expecting. "Not that I want him to—you know. Just I figured—it's been over a month, and he hasn't even _tried_ to grope me in any of the good spots."

"—Mercedes ew, for god sakes."

"Told you you didn't."

She is wrong. Kurt's emotions feel elusive but interconnected, distant but breathing cautiously the same air, as though they are lost in disparate regions of an underground labyrinth. Relief like coolant on hot machinery floods through him. Pride laughs low in his bone marrow. Hope wracks him like a sickness. He does not understand the last, does not understand what he hopes for or why. But as a small break in the conversation dissolves into idle gossip, a fissure parts the hemispheres of Kurt's brain, christens two disparate cortices preoccupied with the same thoughts.

 _Sam is with Mercedes_ , notes one. _What have I done?_

 **Sam is with Mercedes** , notes the other. **What will I do now?**

* * *

Kurt has far too much practice operating on two levels. In a world where the projection of confidence is the only means by which to guarantee a shred of dignity (and therefore self-respect) in the face of harassment and effortless belittling, it is essential not only to act confident, unscathed, impervious, but to believe it without hesitation. So he splits himself, and the mitosis has become as effortless as the taunts he endures.

Most of the time the division is unconscious, buried, so that in scrutinizing himself he sees only the cloudy waters of his soul, or a rock face in stylish gray, smooth and whole. But there are times he can feel the barrier between his halves, can feel as though with his fingers the place where the oily mask has settled over the clear liquid, the ridge that belies the fault line where his pieces meet and snap together. Long before he understood the euphemisms inherent in the terms he labeled his parts his top side and his bottom. Even now, however, the words feel appropriate: His top side dominates feelings that threaten his will or his conscience; his bottom side submits to the uncalloused truth.

In a way the difference is easy to articulate. His top slants ideas, leans backward like italic letters to shield his open core. His bottom booms outward in bold, words bolstered by exaggerated realities.

So when he asks Mercedes "What do you think he's like in bed?" he is thinking two sets of thoughts: His top justifies, _You're just acting normal, having girl chats, throwing her off the scent_ , while his bottom quakes with the thrill of his rashness, gloats that **Mercedes will never** **know what you know**.

Or so he _fears_ / **hopes**.

She dodges the question with words that cringe and soon their conversation is over. And Kurt knows she is a godsend, the thing that will save him from himself— _because there is no way you will risk hurting her_ , his top assures.

But the darker voice inside him whispers **This is a Cold War** , and he pretends not to understand that he is a nation indulging in state-sanctified sin, that his heart like a bomb shed light when Sam told him about Mercedes. Behind an iron curtain he hides the elated knowledge that he is protected, now, by mutually-assured destruction. His indiscretion—née Sam—is no threat to his life's stability.

Kurt's clothes cling tight and he breathes out and in and out.

* * *

He turns Sam's phone over and over in one hand, as though he is spooling invisible thread about it, weaving a cocoon from which it will hatch equipped with wide wings to carry it easily home. Its cracked blue case is plated half-gold by sunlight; its surface is a bird's eye view of the ocean, high enough that undersea ridges make themselves known in the texture of the land.

_You'll just meet him to return it. And to put an end to all of this. You've been weak but of course it's understandable. Sam tricked you. You were thinking about Blaine the entire time, anyway. Weren't you?_

**You know what will happen if you go.**

He is in the kitchen, at the table, his back to the window, and sensual thoughts waft on the smell of sweet dough rising. A waffle iron hisses softly on the counter, and Kurt thinks of stretching on a hillside by a creek that sculpts infant valleys through the bone of the Earth, thinks of wrapping himself in strong arms and letting sunlight iron him into the heat of a boy.

He dials Sam's number and then feels stupid—Sam's phone is in his hands, he can't call him at all. He scowls. "Finn," he summons.

His stepbrother stumbles in from a side room, dressed in a white shirt and athletic shorts. "What's up dude?" As always he carries with him an absent air, half genuine and half manufactured, which at turns relaxes and frustrates Kurt. Today he longs to share in it, wants to let his frontal lobes sag with apathy and strobe with inattention.

"Waffles," Kurt prods. Finn is hardly an accomplished chef, but he out-cooks Kurt's father, and his recipe for sour cream waffles is, while horrifying in its calorie count, startlingly delicious.

"Right."

Kurt broods himself into Sam's phone for another long moment, but before his halves muster themselves to war the clatter of a plate rouses him back to the present. Finn has trimmed bits of batter from the circumference and powdered it lightly with confectionery sugar, and a surge of brotherly affection tickles his shoulders up and paints him a humble smile. "Thanks."

Finn sits across from him and nods. His taps a fork against his empty plate. "You ok?"

Kurt is still clutching Sam's phone in his left hand; he hides it in his lap. "Mhm." He glances around for syrup and spotting it on the counter starts to stand, but Finn waves him down.

"I got it." He tilts his chair back dangerously and grabs the bottle, sliding it across the table. "Waiting to hear from Blaine?"

"Oh. Yes," Kurt fibs. With a loose wrist he lets syrup pour in wavelengths over his breakfast. It is unnecessary—he will douse morsels more thoroughly later—but eating, he firmly believes, is as visual an act as it is gustatory or olfactory.

Finn drums the table with his palms and Kurt tries to recapture that sense of affection before it is annoyed out of him. "Cool. Yeah Rachel told me you already figured out you're going to college together?" He courts pity with a frown. "Lucky, dude. I'm still not really sure how to fix that on my end. I mean I'm living in the moment, of course. Except I was thinking about that—how do you _not_ live in the moment? 'cause I think 'the moment' is supposed to be the present, right? But I was trying to think about living in the future, except it _is_ the present by the time you live in it, isn't it?" He rubs his hands together proudly. "Pretty sure I just disproved word science. No biggie. Ooh, waffle."

As Finn rambles and rises to collect his meal, Kurt is successfully living outside the moment, lodged uncomfortably in the memory of a casual commitment made in giddy abandon, back in the blissful era of one month ago when nothing could possibly go wrong.

Two waffles have come and gone when he hears the fly's-wing buzz of a vibrating phone—not Sam's, as he first expects; the quiver does not tease the tops of his thighs but the divot of his hip, and he struggles valiantly to pull his own cell from his pocket before the caller's impatience wares.

When he sees Blaine's school photo smiling up at him from his screen (one of these days it will lose its sentimental value and he will acknowledge that it is not the most flattering shot, but today is not that day) he stares absently at it. The portrait looks foreign, out of place, and he feels oddly as though he is receiving a call from a storybook character, someone fictional.

"You uh. Gonna get that?" Finn asks helpfully, and Kurt looks at him without hearing for a moment before the words pound his ear drums for attention. He wakes from a reverie and starts. Sam's phone clatters to the floor.

Finn frowns curiously and ducks his head to see what has dropped and Kurt exclaims "Don't!" and hears Finn's head collide with the bottom of the table and then a muffled "Owwwwshit." Kurt takes the opportunity to recover the phone with a scooping gesture and stuff it back between his legs. His own phone ceases its ring, and friction builds in his cells as though struggling to replace the lost vibration.

Finn pulls his head back above the table. "Who's phone is that?" he asks curiously.

"Finn will you mind your own business!" Kurt shouts too loudly, and when his stepbrother's shocked face retreats into his breakfast Kurt feels relieved and embarrassed. With a firm thumb he presses the number 2 and then the call button on his phone's touch pad.

He concentrates, bequeathing his power of speech to his top side. He is monolithic, justified, safe.

Blaine picks up almost immediately. "Hey hot stuff."

"Hey you."

* * *

They speak for fewer than fifteen minutes. Kurt lets Blaine's pages of chatter crumple into balls of waste bin paper, disposed of as his mind wanders haphazardly between the way Sam's hair veils his forehead like rows of plowed land and the storm clouds of Blaine's brows beneath clear tan sky. Finn attempts to impose with a hello once or twice, and when he is ignored he leans forward and squawks "Hey Blaine" into the receiver. His breath on Kurt's cheek leaves a stain of moisture that Kurt wipes away with his sleeve and a glare.

"Heeeey Finn!" Blaine replies.

"Blaine says go away," Kurt relays stubbornly.

"Nope," Blaine refutes matter-of-factly, loud enough that Finn sticks out his tongue facetiously before standing and crossing toward the living room.

"Dishes," Kurt chides.

"Later!"

Kurt toys with the still half-eaten waffle on his plate. He feels mindless. The ease with which he converses with Blaine, spouting glib banter, chatting flippantly, disturbs him. "Hmph."

"Mmmmm," Blaine says. It is a long sound. The phone divides it into a grid of pin-sized blips, a mountain range of sharp peaks capped with white noise. Kurt feels disoriented, lost in valleys of silence.

He is able to respond, though, when Blaine asks him if he is alright. "Of course. Just tired."

"Yeah? Busy night?"

Kurt swallows. "Kind of."

"Wha'd you get up to?"

A lie plots itself with compass and ruler in his mind, and Kurt reads the blueprint carefully. But when he opens his mouth he feels daring like a heat wave distort the pressure systems within him, and his plans grow soggy in the moisture that sweats from his pores.

"I was with Sam," he admits, heart drum-rolling, hands closed tight.

He hears an intake of breath and briars of fear pierce his limbs. Why had he said that? Why why why? What did—why in the name of—

"How could you?" Blaine says, and Kurt can hear the smirk in his voice. "Jeez, Kurt, you sound so nervous. You're allowed to do stuff with other people."

"—Yeah," Kurt says eventually.

"I mean," Blaine clarifies brightly, "I _am_ jealous, but that's just being dutiful. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn't get a little green about guys hanging out with my man?"

His voice is so full of levity that Kurt doesn't even bother to worry if he's serious. Kurt laughs weakly.

"Hey, I actually need to go," Blaine apologizes, "but I'm glad I got to wish you good morning. Good morning, by the way."

"Morning," Kurt says back.

"I love you."

And guilt and joy trample the chambers of his heart. What he has done feels real. He feels small and wild things inside him, as though unfamiliar emotions are auditioning for a starring role in his psyche. He feels as though his skin has swallowed a cast of his own body, that his flesh is an exoskeleton. The world is tight.

"I love you too."

_Of course you do. And that's why this is all going to work out just fine._

**Of course you do. And that's why you're a sick son of a bitch.**

* * *

There is a light rain pattering the window at his back when his phone shudders and an unfamiliar number boasts on its screen. Against his ear the plastic feels humid, warm.

"Hello?" he answers.

"Hey Kurt."

"Guess you need your phone."

"Would be nice."

"Where should..."

"Maybe the park?"

"Fine. ...Nothing can happen, Sam."

"Sure."

"I mean it."

"I understand."

"I'm just bringing you the phone."

"Right."

"Why didn't you call your number, instead of mine?"

"I thought you'd be flattered I knew yours."

He is right.

* * *

In the park they talk for a few shy minutes before their mouths touch as if by accident, and though the glory of early July rain spars with highway clamor and squealing children around them they lose the world in the fog of their breathing, settle on a desolate creek bank and lean against each other, under clouds that spot the sky like leopards' fur and a distant daylit moon flushing pale. With Sam's arms wrapped around him Kurt lets his teeth claw the wet shirt from Sam's body, lets his lips race the raindrops down canals on Sam's chest. Violet stars brand his vision when Sam's hands mutiny his common sense and drag down Kurt's slacks, and though mud dampens his exposed skin he sings an open note too pure for sound as Sam strokes him.

Salt and rainwater coat his tongue and his palm finds the front of Sam's shorts, fingers making fronds spread out from the trunk growing tall beneath him. Sam's moans are translucent, smeared like the surface of the choral brook before them.

He cannot tell if he is seeing Sam's eyes or remembering them.

"Sam," he says.

"Sam Evans," he says.

He feels the wetness in his hand pulse and warm, and when he is sure Sam is finished he moves his nails to Sam's back, gliding figure eights and waterfalls against soaking flesh, and feels Sam's mouth press marks into his collar bone, feels the cold weight of Sam's hair caress his cheek, and when he finally comes he lies back in his ruined clothes against the ground, and does not move when Sam lays his head and bare shoulder in the nook of his sternum.

On telephone wires overhead clinging raindrops catch light from between breaking clouds and shine like sapphires. Kurt sings breathily their notes and Sam hears them, and knows what they are. They are a lullaby for summer.

* * *

For weeks they meet in ways so carefully planned to seem unplanned that in deluded moments they can believe in coincidence, in fate or misfortune. They talk and laugh as though with ease, wander aimlessly, bury tension in a deep trove. By sheer chance ( **Ha** ) they find themselves alone, in a movie theater bathroom or a friend's basement. Then they speak with their hands.

There is a wall between them. Sam feels it in the way that Kurt tenses when he notices himself smiling, in the clothes they never manage to shed fully.

Always Kurt insists that it is the last time.

Sam is amused, at first. It is like a game. Then he is comforted. It is like a ritual. And then...

The summer stretches like an animal hide and tans in the sun. The summer sets in their skin like a warm glow, like a cancer, incubates and burns. The summer streaks naked toward autumn, toward crisp pillows of leaves that succumb to human weight and flatten against the cold ground.

And then it is August 21st.


	4. Some Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some boys are filling /  
> Some boys are filling a hole

It is a weird day.

Sam dreams two dreams in the hours ripe before dawn. In one he maneuvers through a complex of unrelated scenes: a family reunion, in which cousins he has never met stampede through blackened wood hallways in his old home in Tennessee; his high school graduation, held inexplicably in the lobby of an old hotel, so that when his class throws their caps they stick in the ceiling, break open lightbulbs that die without dimming; a wedding ceremony, at which his classmates watch from strangely shrunken pews two strangers at the altar, one of whom Sam thinks may be himself. In the manner of dreams the moments have no solid edges; they fade between one another, hiding details in a murk of shimmering air. Continuity falters and is reborn in dark spaces.

But the scenes are unified by human silence. The faces, new and familiar, do not break to release sound, in speech or laughter, groans or coughs or sighs. Instead, birds perch on rafters, behind cupboard doors, in gaudy chandeliers, broadcasting with apathetic parrot-talk the words unsaid, crowing moodless orders, hacking cackles from thin throats.

At the wedding he watches a tern dive and cry "I do!" before an anonymous gunshot breaks its tiny heart into pieces that paint the wedding party red. The congregation gasps, and then gapes at the noises they have made. A cheer rises—their curse is broken! Tongues flap and language flows like a river down the aisles. An organ player pounds the chords to a joyful hymn, and soon the room is awash in song.

Sam opens his mouth to sing and no sound comes out. The dead bird's feathers settle on the floor.

His second dream is short but feels eternal, drawn in lines that parallel stripes of reality from one week before. Kurt sprawls lazily on his back over a plush comforter in the sanctuary of his room, a 50s mystery novel held securely by hands extended over his head. His elbows are adorably straight, so that the fold of the book forms a roof held aloft by the pillars of his arms, and Sam is helpless to convey his raw fondness for the strange posture, or for the gentle ellipses of Kurt's eyes as they squint to defeat the distance. Or for the fact that he reads mysteries at all. Kurt will later claim when Sam asks that it's not about suspense or struggle—it's the simple pleasure of living with a threatless unknown, a puzzle that solves itself on the page merely by reading forward. "Besides which," he will confess, ducking his head slightly—Sam will nearly die of affection—"I may have a slight crush on Archie Goodwin."

But in the dream Sam doesn't ask. He sits on Kurt's desk chair, which he has moved so that its back is to the door, a subconscious barricade against the greater reality of the world at large. His body anchors in the wake of a raucous tide: As always their alone time has hurricaned, and Sam's semen stains the sheets beneath the blanket on which Kurt lies, pulled forth by Kurt's gravity, the black hole of a closed fist.

He is not lucid, exactly, but he knows that he is dreaming, is aware that this moment has long since passed. He turns his head from side to side and watches his vision wobble, rushing to fill in details his consciousness has forgotten—a drinking glass half full on Kurt's nightstand, the reflection of a bronze lotion bottle in Kurt's mirror, Kurt's clothes hanging like colored skins grayed by the shadows of the closet door. Kurt laughs to himself and sends warm ripples through the room. The sound of a dry page turning and the faint hum of an overhead light dust the air.

And Sam grips the sides of his chair until his hands cramp and his bones whine, grips for dear life. He will wake soon, from this moment and its feeling, its easy feeling: One arm of the balance scale of his tautology has finally been raised into the bowl of Kurt's arms, unstirred by tension and released from the weight of guilt. So he grips hard, and says to himself aloud, "Don't wake up, Sam. Don't wake up."

But it doesn't matter. Kurt tilts his head back to look at him, and then he is rising, and giving Sam that uncomfortable look, that horribly familiar look— _What are you still doing here?_ Kurt crosses the room and sits with his back to Sam at a keyboard that Sam is sure wasn't there before, and rolls his fingers, summons a stream of notes too rich to belong to the instrument before him, and milky light seeps through the coils of Sam's brain…

* * *

Piano melodies, a hot morning. Sam is awake. The modern blare of Stacie's old stereo coasts on gray light from an antediluvian sunrise, and wrapped in a womb of blankets Sam hears a Christian rock singer belting:

_You wake up_

_Only to find there was no peace of mind in your sleep_

_You wake up_

_The dreams that were there are the memories you can't seem to keep_

"Stacie," Sam whines. Sweat warps his sense of touch so that he feels ensconced in the soul of a fever.

"Dad says it's time for you to get up," his sister counters.

He inhales deep and then sighs, resigning himself to consciousness, and opens his eyes. "What time is it?"

The motel room, lit wholly by daylight, is densely populated with the flotsam of five lives packed snug, but by necessity it is almost inhumanly neat, dustless and ordered for sanity's sake. By now he is used to the taste of unfiltered air and the faint pot stink wafting in from one of the neighbor's rooms. In an odd way it really does feel like home. Stacie hits the pause button on the family's sole music player, gives him a look both exasperated and pitying, and indicates the digital clock on the nightstand inches from his face. It reads 1U:41, which means it's either 10:41 or 10:47. Sam groans regardless.

As he rolls out of bed he offers another question: "Where's Dad?" His feet absorb the texture of the nylon carpet as they connect with the floor.

"Outside. Mom took Stevie to the park." She stands from the nest she has made from her sleeping bag and lets herself fall elbows-first onto the bed he has just evacuated. "Kurt called you a little while ago."

"K," he says. His waking mind has not yet churned the dreams from his memory, and he feels tension and loss like quicksand fall slowly through him.

"Do you have a _thing_ for him?"

Sam finds himself momentarily paralyzed. The quicksand drains from him through a hole speared open by a solitary tower of ice. But then he swallows and lets out a strained chuckle. "What?"

"'cause Mom said that _she_ thought that you were spending an awful lot of time together and that if _she_ were Mercedes she would be—"

"Stacie would you stop gossiping with Mom about my relationships?" he fumes, and hopes that he is already flushed from morning blood so that his face does not redden further.

Stacie frowns to show that she is uninterested in his discomfort, and then smiles daringly. "So you'd call it a _relationship_ , hmmm?"

"—that's not what I said," he counters lamely, turning his back to her. He scratches his thigh through his pajama pants and enters the bathroom.

Stacie behind him taunts, "Saaam likes Kurrrt," and he slams the door. "Overactive imagination," he shouts back, and shivers at his reflection in the mirror. He stands still a moment, watches mortification drain from him slowly, breathes in and out as the ice inside him melts. A chill takes him, as though an invisible hand has glided across his bare chest, and he imagines Kurt's touch, soft and then rough, all the more real for its absence. Sam stares himself in the eye.

Yes. Today.

He pulls off his PJs, uses the toilet and turns on the shower. When the water is pleasantly cool against the ridge of his knuckles he steps inside and lets his anxiety soak, his frustration saturate, until both are heavy with the dew of urgency. Today.

Because the thing of it is, Stacie's question is legitimate. Would he call what he has with Kurt a relationship? Yes and fucking no; the epoch of summer '11 has shredded the universe's natural laws, distorted his conceptions of true and not true; chords once pure and major in new contexts dissonate, reverse, change position on the neck of his guitar.

He is sick of the fear of being found out, and sicker for the thought that he does know what there is to be found. There is a devastating flaw in his tautology, and it shares its unpronounceable name with the twisted mandala of ifs and sort-ofs and maybes that currently labels their lives.

He is neither with Kurt nor is he not.

He thinks of the shriveling silence that follows their encounters, the unspoken uncertainty that clings to them. A thread of claustrophobia spools round his stomach, and he kills the flow of water just in time to hear a new song beat against the door to the other room:

_Ok what's next, after the sex_

_What do we do now?_

_Finding the time, drawing the line_

_and never crossing it..._

"Stacie!" he shouts, pulling a towel around him. "Stacie, you're not supposed to be listening to Dad's CDs, they're not appropriate for—"

By now Sam has pushed open the door and sees not his sister but the back of a brown-haired head, and for an instant his mind explodes in fantasy, imagines that Kurt's call had been to announce an early visit, supposes his family is gone and will be for hours, forgets completely his angst and feels only the coarse fabric of the towel against his skin.

Three-tenths of a second later he recognizes his father, crouching over the stereo and a leather case of disc sleeves, and shuts down his brain before it can even consider assigning the incident any creepy Freudian implications. Sam clears his throat. "Oh—oh, uh, sorry Dad. Thought that Stacie was—"

"Mm?" his dad replies, voice straining to pierce through the music. He turns his head over his shoulder and shakes it distractedly. "Stacie's out playing with Mrs. Reese's daughter, uh. Carole."

"Cary," Sam corrects. "K." He fishes clothes from a suitcase against the back wall, careful not to expose the garments near the bottom, and retreats back into the bathroom to outfit himself.

"Oh, right," his dad says, head down, before Sam closes the door. "Your mother said you seemed a little blue, or—no," he mutters, tossing a CD case to one side, "tried that. Uh. What? Right—that you were off. Are you doing ok?"

"Fine," Sam says loudly, as the song wanders on: _I'm getting feelings I'm hiding too well_... "Maybe something different today, Dad," he encourages.

He sees the back of his dad's head nod. "You're right." There is a click and the music dies.

* * *

After dressing Sam emerges to find the room empty, so he dismisses the missed call message on his phone, pockets it and his wallet, and heads outside.

The late morning sun is high and scalding, and distant pavement smudges the scenery. Under his feet weeds puff labored breaths through cramped channels of concrete and form supine smiles on the patio. Sam puts a hand to his eyes to block the truck's glare incising the ether before him and feels his mouth dry. Parched mud cakes the navy paint along the wheel wells. A bone-dust corona for a black sun.

Sam's dad sits sideways in the driver's seat with his legs hanging out the car door. From the front they look like stray whiskers hanging from a steel beast's rumpled maw. He taps his thumbs on his knees to the beat of a silent song. When he sees Sam coming he looks up and smiles. "I got it. I've got just the one."

Sam forces a poor excuse for a grin but cannot bring himself to offer any verbal congratulations. He has enough stress to deal with today without... but whatever. He forces a poor excuse for a grin.

"Come on," his dad says with a hint of excitement, swinging his feet to the pedals. "I'm—uh, where is it I'm taking you?"

"Lima Bean," Sam supplies. The touch of the door handle foreshadows the suffocating heat that meets him in the passenger seat.

His dad chews on his tongue as he picks up an unlabeled CD shining in his lap and slides it into the player. "Just the one. Meeting Mercedes there?"

"Yeah."

"Nice girl. Very nice girl. You be gentle with her," his dad says as he starts the car, shaking a finger at nothing.

Sam is not sure what he means but isn't in the mood to ask. "Yeah."

The sun revolves sideways as the truck orients itself and joins the road. From the dashboard speakers synth and noise hollow out a cavern of sound. "I'm feeling good about this one," his dad repeats, and a voice resonates:

_There isn't much that I feel I need_

_A solid soul and the blood I bleed_

_But with a little girl and by my spouse_

_I only want a proper house_

"It's the lucky one," Sam's dad assures, twisting the volume dial down. "Eh Sam? You feel that?"

"Sure Dad." Sam stretches his neck and fiddles with the air vents, though the AC hasn't worked for weeks.

His dad nods. "Yes. Today's the day. I think I'll stop by Tom's first to see if he's heard about any leads. Then the library for the computer. Listings. Mm, I can hear this one coming a mile away. Maybe I'll visit Regina before the library. Or after. It doesn't matter. This is the song, Sam, my lucky song. Can't fail me."

Sam rolls down the window, feels the breeze highlight the sweat on his forehead. "Can we just listen to music, Dad? I'm not really feeling talkative right now."

"Oh, sure." He turns the dial again and the car fills with a tribal beat, sparring chants, staggered harmonies. Sam smells gasoline and greenery, fuel and flora. Plants that build air from light and muck that powers light and paints the air brown. An imperfect cycle, something lost with every iteration. He feels he can relate.

It is barely a minute before the volume dips again. "I was just thinking," his dad says, "what was wrong with my other lucky songs. Ah!" He snaps. "They were too _old_." He waits for this to register. Sam keeps his gaze fixed out the window. "Sure you need the classics, sure you do. But you can't relive the past. This is about the future. Have to keep your mind on the future!"

"Great," Sam says, probably too dismissively.

"Ha," his dad says. "Mm. The one." A tiny spark of confidence fades from his voice. "Just the one." He taps the steering wheel, hums along. "Maybe at the library I'll see if they've got any newer albums." He clicks his tongue. "Mm. Maybe that's what I'll do. What do you think, Sam?"

"I think you should spend your time looking for work instead of a damn good luck charm, Dad," he vents, harshly, automatically, and immediately he regrets it, feels shock at his own words form mirror faces on him and his dad.

There is silence for a moment save for the song fading. His dad turns off the radio and clears his throat. "I— I _am_ looking for work, every day, you _know_ that I am—"

His defensive tone provokes something in Sam and before he can stop himself he is replying: "No, Dad, what you do is you drive around to all your friends' places and pretend to look for work, and then you blame it all—"

"Samuel Evans you do not talk to me like—"

"—blame it all on a _song_ that you can't find a job? It's pathetic and—"

"Sam—"

Pent-up ire spews forth as though from the lip of a volcano. "No, I'm sorry Dad, but you're—how old are you? Forty fucking nine years old, and you're using superstition as an excuse? As your reason to keep the rest of us stuck in that goddamn motel room for—"

"SAM!"

It is possibly the loudest he has ever heard his father shout in his life. He recoils as suddenly as he had pounced, and he feels small against the cloth seats. Lines of rage are held frozen on his dad's face. He is framed by the window behind him so that he seems to exist halfway between silhouette and still life, and Sam feels sorry, horribly sorry for his accusations, wants to pull back his molten words and bury them again under cold bedrock. He pulls his knees into his chest on an old impulse.

"Sam," his dad says. His voice is no longer loud but the word is strained, and hurt bubbles to the surface in creases in his cheeks and above his temples. "Sam, I am out there every day pounding the pavement, and don't you even _think_ aboutsuggesting otherwise. You have no idea—"

"I have an idea," he murmurs.

"Excuse me?"

"I said I don't have no idea," he replies meekly.

His dad lets out a noise of exasperation, like the spinning of a lawnmower blade, and shakes his head. He turns the car sharply. "Sam, I'm sorry, but you don't understand."

"I do understand," Sam asserts again, sitting straight and letting his legs fall forward.

"No, Sam, you don't, because—"

"Damnit Dad yes I do! I understand because I did it too, and so did Mom, and—"

"Well then you know how hard it is!"

"But guess what, we both found jobs!" Sam seethes, vim restored. "Mom's been working at the laundromat for what, two months now, and I've had the pizza thing since before prom!"

"Son," his dad says as though filtering his words through a rock wall, as though flaunting his patience. He gestures sharply with one hand as he drives. "Those are _jobs_ , I'm looking for an occupation, it's different."

Sam's scoff is almost a laugh. "Dad the only difference is that we sucked it up and got shitty work, because it's better than nothing. Because some of us want to get Stevie and Stacie out of that piece of shit room before—"

"How DARE you, Sam, how _dare_ you talk like I don't care about—"

"Because Dad sometimes—"

"NO!" The shout is like thunder, like a nuclear bomb. "You've said more than your share and now you are going to _listen to me_." His voice is rich and trembling, like a violin bowed across all strings. "You think I don't want to get us out of there, that I _enjoy_ living like this, that I do this because of all the _free time_ it gets me? Good God, Sam, I haven't taken a job like the ones you and your mother have because it's the only thing keeping us from _settling in!_ Do you even—you know as well as I do it's already becoming _normal_ ," he says, in a way that makes the word terrifying. "And I hate it—I _hate_ with every goddamn piece of me that our, our... _situation_ has made just taking the easy work so tempting, that it makes that extra sliver of comfort seem like it's it's it's _worth_ it somehow. But the only way—the _only_ way this gets better is if we find a real solution, not some band-aid, and Sam I am good at what I do, and I am going to get us out of this, and maybe you think it's just my ego but Sam it's just not true." He hammers his last words as though he is nailing closed the lid of a coffin. "Just—not—true."

His father is watching the road by necessity but Sam can see the threat of tears even from the side. And he barks back, because if he doesn't he'll cry, and he can't let himself cry: "Then why can't you—why do you waste your time with this—" He shakes his head as he scrambled for an adequate word. "— _delusion_ with the music, the magic songs?"

His reply is immediate and tempered, and somewhat desperate. "Because if it's not the music's fault Sam then it's—" He swallows, as though he cannot bear to finish the thought, and licks his lips, and stares ahead.

"Dad," Sam says.

"What?" he asks, turning his head.

"The light's green."

"Oh." He refocuses, pulls forward, pauses long. "—It's important to have something to believe, son. You say it's a delusion... Everybody does it. It's something to believe in, we need that."

Sam tries franticly to calm himself, to save himself from this, from tears, from the sight of his dad vulnerable, and he finds an out in a mocking reply. "I thought that's what God was for."

Anger alights again in his dad's eyes and it is worse and better at the same time. "Well Sam I tried God for six months and it didn't seem to be doing us any damn favors!" Exasperation like gravel seeds itself in the soil of his voice as gravel grinds beneath them—he has pulled in front of the Lima Bean. Mercedes' car stamps her presence. "And, oh, _by the way—_ where do you get off—don't try to pretend like _I'm_ the only one with a questionable escape here."

Sam scoffs, but feels his defenses stir. "What is that supposed to mean?"

His dad pauses with open mouth and calculating eyes, as though considering. With restraint he finally utters, "Never mind."

"No, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Sam turns to him, ready to blitz if he sees an opening.

But his dad keeps his man safe, offers a false smile. "Nothing. It means nothing, Sam. Have fun with Mercedes, say hi to Kurt for me would you?"

His tone is knowing and Sam panics before assuring himself that this is _Dad_ , the most stuck-in-his-head, unobservant... He is confused, feels tired. "—Kurt's not here, Dad."

His dad shrugs one shoulder and keeps his eye on the windshield. "I'll see you tonight."

Sam watches him a moment, trying to read him, and then gives up. He pushes open the passenger door fiercely, lurches out of the truck without a goodbye, and waits for the satisfying roar of an engine that never comes. Instead his dad putters leisurely into the drive-thru. Sam briefly considers fishing through a nearby garbage can for something to throw at him and then sits on the sidewalk outside the entrance, dodging the glances of newly-caffeinated patrons and trying to seem apathetic. He can't do this now. He'll go home, or call Quinn and rant, or consult Santana for snarky retorts.

No. Today's the day. He has decided this already. Ugh.

He lets his eyes falls close and remembers Kurt's bare shoulders burned red by contact with the roof of his car, the wide angles of his legs crossed on a beach chair, the burn of his lips under soft rain. On the radio buzzes some college employee's indie collection, slightly altered open chords under a nasally voice that sings:

_Something has got to give_

_I wouldn't wait for it_

_Baby I bet it's overdue_

And he's right, of course. Just like all the music is, today.

It is a weird day.

He stands and lets the automatic doors open for him, spots the back of Mercedes' head at a booth nearby. The music warns twice in two voices:

_Proceed with caution_

_from here on in_

"No shit," Sam mutters to himself, and steps inside. The door slides closed behind him.

* * *

After his date with Mercedes the walk to work is pensive, pleasantly long. Sea birds vacationing from Lake Erie sing him a wide circumference, rouse with fish-breath the early afternoon. Beneath his feet brown grass complains of insult to injury and scratches at his ankles. He feels sunburn rise like a froth on the back of his neck.

He taxis pizzas from home to home in a company car whose radio he silences after the first irksomely apropos song broadcasts:

_I guess I shouldn't blame you for being ambiguous_

_I know that it's innocent but you_

_Are keeping me from building something intimate_

_But I'll give in if you want me to_

At the end of his shift he pockets his tips and makes a call. And it's another passenger seat, another seven hours of daylight dead.

"Thanks for the lift," Sam says, with more pep than he feels, or maybe more pep than he thinks he ought to. It's hard not to beam, though, watching Kurt shift his head from side to side in rhythm to an upbeat pop number, some girl group whose lead singer Kurt emulates brilliantly. But a tension tugs at his insides, even as Kurt nods an "of course" in reply before belting:

_In the heat of summer sunshine_

_I miss you like nobody else_

_In the heat of summer sunshine_

_I'll kiss you and nobody needs to know_

Low light sketches orange over the ivory of Kurt's skin, turns him to papyrus, and Sam has no words to map over him in calligraphy, is not ready to verbalize what he has come to say. When the song ends Kurt cuts the music and swats Sam's knee, and the ease of the contact soothes him slightly. "You're quiet."

"Oh just. Like listening to you sing," he says, smiling a little more than he feels, a little less than he wants. Proceed with caution.

"Flatterer," Kurt accuses, but his lips curl up. "You know I tried to call you this morning."

"Yeah I saw," Sam says. "Figured I'd play hard to get." As always Kurt's moods are as mysterious as the weather, so Sam sends out these test balloons, locates his pressure systems and the front that marks the line between acceptable flirtation and unconscionable familiarity.

"Mmm," Kurt says. For all Sam adores his singing it's the noises Kurt makes with his mouth closed that rattle him most. He feels them like bass vibrations, in the atomic spaces between his vertebrae.

Sam's eyes know what he is going to say before his mouth does, and they widen in preparation. "Kiss me," he says, startling himself for the second time in eight hours, and even before Kurt blinks in surprise Sam is shaking his head, searching for the backspace key. He hears Kurt's epiglottis flinch. What the hell was he—'Kiss me'? He feels cracks appear in the ripening night sky.

He looks at Kurt, finally, who seems stuck in bewilderment. "I just meant," Sam starts. "No, not _actually_ , it was... 'cause we were bantering, I mean?" That, of course, makes no sense whatsoever, but he can't say nothing. He lets himself draw anger from an internal wound, as though with a rusty bucket from a crumbling well. It is absurd that he should feel this way, handicapped by Kurt's—their bizarre need to conform to a false history. Patently absurd.

"Sam—"

But Sam is not going to be lectured. "No—yes, I'm sorry Kurt, just. _Please_ don't let this ruin the evening, ok, I'm not ready to—" Go home? He doesn't want to get into the whole mess with his dad with Kurt. "—Can we just forget I said anything? Put the music back on." He slumps back in his seat and crosses his arms, sets his jaw and breathes through his nose. D-minor flits between stalactites in the cave of his mind, a defective D whose F-sharp has dulled in the dark.

Kurt says nothing, nor does he reach for his iPod. His cheek twitches. He turns on the headlights with an absent gesture.

Sam feels the breaks engage and looks without moving out the side window; they do not appear to have left the road, nor is a stop sign visible, and for a moment he has the sinking feeling that he is about to be ejected from the vehicle. Instead Kurt turns to watch him, his eyes innocent and curious. His eyes are a child's eyes, open in learning, or discovery. His eyes are celestial bodies, the calm centers of storms. He leans forward and they grow.

The motion is neither slow nor quick, and when he kisses Sam it is neither chaste nor wild, short nor long. To Sam it is remarkable in every way.

Kurt pulls back and drives forward again. Sam feels fireflies light in the basin of his soul.

* * *

Kurt's place isn't far, and Sam isn't sure whether to talk or stay quiet or what. (He wonders briefly when exactly he began thinking of it as _Kurt's place_ , instead of Finn's, or the Hudson-Hummels'.) Kurt is no help, but Sam forgives him, and feels this first seed of forgiveness bloom across acres of fallow grudges. Sam forgives Kurt everything, there in his car, forgives him the restless nights, the private humiliations, the double standards and apathetic goodbyes. Today's the day.

Eventually Sam asks "So what do you want to do tonight?" and when Kurt says "I dunno!" he sounds chipper, bubbly, even radiant, and Sam makes a noise like a smile and taps his feet against the floor mat. The air hums with life but not loudly enough—Sam wants to fill it, so that it matches the borealis of joy in his brain. "You mind?" he says as his finger hovers over the iPod's play button.

Kurt shakes his head. "Mm-mm."

The sound is like a trigger, and this time Sam is aware. "Kiss me," he says again, boldly this time, and Kurt's cheeks dim to rose, his shoulders hunch shyly, his mouth trembles. And he does. Again. He doesn't slow the car this time, just leans to the side and presses their lips together, but Sam sees his eyelids tumble down, thin shades shielding the moment from superfluous detail. Sam feels extraterrestrial, in wonder at a new world.

* * *

When Kurt's playlist does get turned back on and rock drums crescendo like approaching thunder Kurt switches it off immediately, looking suddenly mortified, and Sam becomes minorly concerned. "What is it?"

"What's what? I don't know how that got on there," Kurt answers, apparently unable to commit to a single reply.

Sam laughs. Sometimes Kurt is completely unreadable, and sometimes he is the worst liar in the world. "What is it?" he asks again, now that he knows what he is asking about, and leans forward to check the iPod's screen.

"Nope." With a deft hand Kurt secures the device and tucks it between his legs.

Sam laughs again. "You really think I won't go there?"

"How do you know that isn't exactly what I want?" Kurt counters, and though his tone is over-the-top, clearly facetious, a lustful brine pollutes the lake of Sam's innocent affection. With a sly smile and no hesitation he reaches across the seat and lays his palm flat on Kurt's thigh, and though he makes no effort to retrieve the iPod Kurt flinches defensively with a tremulous giggle. Sam keeps his hand steady save for his pinky, which he moves in teasing circles down the slope of Kurt's leg until it brushes unmistakeably against him, and Kurt squeals, "S-Sam I was-aha _kidding_ I'm driving for-aha _stop it tickles!_ "

They are seconds from the driveway, and despite Kurt's protests Sam feels him solidify against his finger. Kurt's laughter poisons his common sense, dizzies him like champagne. So instead of stopping he brings his other hand forward, slips it purposefully up the side of Kurt's shirt, lets his nails graze Kurt's skin in quick flurries. Kurt quakes beneath his touch; his limbs spasm and the car swerves threatlessly as he chokes on his own laughter, lobbing curses at clumsy intervals like a child throwing water balloons that slip from his hands. "I-ha _ha I'll kill you Sam just_ haha, I'll cut off your-or ah c-cut your f-fucking arms off and-ah you, ahstop, please stop..."

Sam is laughing too, now, and has dedicated one hand to warding off Kurt's flailing counterattacks. "Tell me what's on the thing!" he demands, sparing a moment to offer a finger to a car honking behind them.

"—ah-kay y-you ok, you win!" Kurt pleads. Sam ceases his onslaught and collapses backward, chuckling mirthfully.

Kurt scowls petulantly and focuses on parking the car, ignoring an affronted vroom as the tailgater passes. "Well?" Sam goads.

Kurt mumbles something to the effect of "tsaltiemallokai."

"Scuse me?"

"I have a bizarre and unforgivable weakness," Kurt spouts shamefully, "for pop-punk bands from the last fifteen years." He hangs his head.

"...what?"

Kurt's irises dart toward him quizzically. "What?"

"I mean—that's it?" Sam smirks. "I was expecting... I don't know, self-recorded Snoop Dogg covers or something."

Kurt wrinkles his nose. "It's a serious failing! My musical tastes are supposed to be infallible!" Kurt's chest swells, and Sam feels light-headed. He lavishes in having touched something so untouchable.

"Kurt," he says. "I formed a Justin Bieber tribute band. I think you can still claim the musical high ground."

Kurt "mmph"s. "You did. And I don't mock you nearly often enough for it," he mutters. Sam grins. "But still... it's generic, and adolescent, and goes against every epicurean bone in my body."

Sam's grin softens. "You're—"

"Don't say adorable," Kurt interrupts, with surprising urgency, masked though it is by mundane agitation.

So Sam answers back just as quickly. "I wasn't going to," he assures, insists. "I was going to say... incredible." He shrugs. "Maybe that's not any better, but."

Kurt smooths a wrinkle from his pants. "It is."

Sam acts on impulse again, and is already halfway to Kurt's lips when he meets resistance in the form of a raised index finger pressed against his forehead. He invents sensations for every line in Kurt's fingerprint, draws a contour map of tactile data, stores the topography in the memory of his flesh. "Finn," Kurt cajoles, eyeing the kitchen window. The sun's remainder affixes itself to the glass by tree-branch spines.

Sam says reluctantly, "Yeah."

He forgets about Kurt's guilty pleasure music for the evening. It is either for the best or a shame. The song like the day's others has a message for him:

_Oh oh oh_

_How was I supposed to know that you were_

_Oh oh over me_

_I think that I should go_

_Something's telling me to leave but I won't_

_'cause I'm damned if I do ya, damned if I don't_

* * *

Kurt lets them inside and they stalk the halls like thieves, are at the stairs when Kurt's phone rings. The sound breaks their surreptitious aura, tense with secrets waiting to be indulged, like a flare marring a black sky. Finn's loud footfalls shake the ceiling.

"Hey Kurt," he greets as he appears on the landing above. "I was just—oh. Uh, hi Sam."

Kurt excuses himself to his room to take the call, but Sam has no easy out. He chats distractedly after Finn descends, chats and chats and _chats_. Sam considers beating Finn unconscious with a convenient object—a broom handle, maybe, or a tire iron—but decides that Kurt would not approve. It is ten minutes before he catches on, interrupts Finn and speaks the magic words he is waiting to hear: "I'm not going to tell Burt you left to see Rachel the night he's out of town. You can go now." He does, clapping Sam on the back as he passes.

Sam hears music and laughter as he vaults the stairs. Laughter he has missed, laughter he has not caused. Each chuckle is the bang of a hammer against a sparking anvil, sculpting jealousy in the forge of his heart.

* * *

It is like the dream. Kurt's room wades in the same yellow light and from the door frame Sam can see the same insignificant details—the glass of water, the bottles and ironed clothes. And for all the pleasure of moments past, he feels the same dread, as though a hot wire has soldered itself to the ends of his throat and melted metal like wax drips fire over the chambers of his ribcage.

There are two important differences, of course. For one Kurt is on his stomach, not his back, one hand holding the phone to his ear while the other threads the lip of a pillowcase between his fingers. His face bears no sharp signs of concentration; instead it clutches the round insignias of glee and molds them across the disjointed phrases he speaks, scattering laughter like shotgun fire throughout. Sam's brain blocks all words but 'Blaine,' as though the name is perfectly shaped to circumnavigate the armor of his ears.

And then there is the music, glorified power chords (D, F sharp minor, A, then D again, or equivalent intervals, at least, for the bar he bothers analyzing) through which a male voice—Blaine's? No, but maddeningly similar—intones:

_Put another X on the calendar_

_Summer's on its deathbed_

_There is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends_

"—you at least tell me when you'll know?" Kurt begs, giddy. Sam's temples throb. He in inside the waist of an iron bell, quivering with ferrous rhythms. "You're such a teeeease. —I am not! _That_ is called a healthy appreciation for the art of suspense. —No you shut up. —Nuh-uh. —Nuh-uh. Haha well _maybe_ if you were ever _around—_ Blaine!—Mhmhm, just you wait..."

Sam is an anchor. His legs are buried in bedrock and he holds a severed rope securely in rusty hands. He feels like a misplaced nightmare, broken and snarling and completely invisible to the waking world.

A stopwatch clocks the moments his presence goes unnoticed. Melancholy gapes from his stomach. He will set the world record for hiding in plain sight. He will fall asleep standing up. He will walk backwards and lift his footprints from the carpet. He will chain time to the passenger seat of a cooling car and lock the doors. He will bind summer to the wheels and drown the gas tank. He will bar lightning from human agency, evict the modern age, let cell phone towers stand deaf, old cobweb strands left by alloyed spiders.

He will not cry.

"—Well, probably. I guess it depends. Where do you think you'll end up _OHmy_ _god_ _._ " Kurt careens to the side, gripping his sheets in fear as his vacant gaze finally widens to include Sam. After a second he clutches his chest with one hand, and glares as though Sam has sneaked up on him. Sam exerts no effort to react. The electron swarms in his atoms gather dust. He knows their speed but not their direction because they have neither.

"—No—no, I'm fine. Yes. Sorry, I—I thought I saw something."

So Sam is nothing.

"Hey I should probably go, I have to get up early tomorrow. —Sure. Goodnight." Kurt opens his mouth again, but glances at Sam and stops. He licks his lips. "You too," he says with a strained smile, and hangs up slowly. "Hey," he says to Sam.

Sam's gears squeak as he presses their teeth together. "Hey there."

Kurt breaths in as though to say something and then doesn't. Then he does. "Hey."

Sam turns to the music player, still playing. His neck chirrs.

_Sarah smiles like Sarah doesn't care_

_She lives in her world so unaware_

_Does she know that my destiny lies with her?_

"Do you like it?" Kurt asks. "Blaine wants the Warblers to arrange 'Mona Lisa' for Sectionals next year so he sent me the album."

"Ah." Sam knows he should move. Signals short between his brain and his muscles. "He." A bubble clogs his throat so he clears it. "He better get started."

Kurt is silent in a way that feels meaningful, full of meaning so thick that Sam cannot see him through it. Does he want to? "Because school starts soon," Sam clarifies, because the silence is plugging his pores, sealing sweat inside him.

"Blaine—" Kurt props his chin on one hand, angles his head to the side so that he does not have to make eye contact. "It looks like Blaine might be transferring to McKinley." He plays with his fingernails. "So that's exciting."

A wind rattles Kurt's window and shakes the leaves from Sam's fantasies. Their skeletons beg for winter to bury them. "Mm," Sam says. He needs to move. He steps forward with the crude motions of an automaton, graceless and unfluid. He does not know where he is going.

"Sam," Kurt says. "Are—are you ok?"

"Mm."

"Sam I'm allowed to feel happy that I get to spend more time with my boyfriend." He says it like an accusation.

"Yep Kurt that's—" he begins to snap, but cuts himself down. "I'm happy for you."

Kurt looks away again and turns off the music. "I'm just saying I've never been unclear about—"

"Kurt for fuck's sake don't lecture me—"

"I apologize if you've suffered any illusions that—"

"—about _any_ of this, oh would you _stop_ , illusions? What was I supposed to think when you—"

"—this was anything other than a fling."

"—do the sorts of—in the car—oh is that what it is. Is that what it is?" The bare trees in him serve as kindling and now his engines run at full steam. He is a locomotive, and Kurt is tied to the tracks. Somehow he is on Kurt's bed, his body looming over Kurt's, their heads close. "Is that what it is?" he asks again. He is not tearing up; vapor is condensing on the cold glass of his eyes.

Kurt's eyes are wide. His chest rises and falls against Sam as though pulled in and out by the mass of a passing moon, caught in an orbit that entwines them, giftwraps them in astral ribbon. When he answers his voice is scarcely a voice, registers in Sam's ears with barren amplitude, is less than an exhale. "No."

"I'm not moving," Sam whispers. "I'm not moving until I believe you because—" For condensation the drops are hot as they spill down his cheeks.

"Sam," Kurt whispers back, "oh, Sam." His head lifts slightly and kisses his him and holds their mouths together, breathing through his nose.

Sam is an anchor. His legs are buried in bedsheets and he holds Kurt's torso in adamantine arms. He feels like a young dream, inchoate and discontinuous and oblivious to the waking world.

Their mouths open in tandem with the buttons of Kurt's shirt, and every inch of skin exposed is another reason why, another wordless reason that follows the unanswered dash: "Because—" Sam says with urgency, alongside every kiss he places down Kurt's neck, across the spathes of his collar, in the dip of his sternum. "Because— Because— Because—." With mindless purpose he shucks the shirt from Kurt's arms.

His jawbone is draped in steamy heat, and between bites like red glory on Sam's ear Kurt hushes, "Believe me, honey, please believe me, I'm so sorry."

The pet name and a glance at where Kurt's hipbone peeks above his skewed beltline surges Sam's blood, and he pants desperately, pulling helplessly at Kurt's pockets, "I need to, I need us to be," and Kurt understands. Their clothes disperse like shrapnel but Sam misses none of it: the way goosebumps spring eagerly forward as Kurt's pants descend; the sight of him, agonizingly cute and stunningly beautiful, stripped to only socks and underwear; the slow reveal as Kurt's boxers ride down svelte thighs, over gently tensed knees, across lithe calves and ankles, perfect ankles, perfect like his wrists; even the long plains of his feet as he bares them, the balls of his heels and his smooth soles. For a terrible moment Sam's vision fails, blocked as Kurt pulls rabidly on Sam's shirt, tangling it in his arms; and then there it is: Kurt, fully naked, sprawled below him, for the first time. Unsummoned a thought too pure for English springs forth, gleaned from a pop novel years ago: Totum maior summa partum.

Kurt with consuming eyes pulls at the fastenings on Sam's shorts, and he loses track of his sensations, bends his hips back as Kurt drags the last clothes from his body, and crawls over him, eclipses him. They grind together like merging galaxies, trading stars of spit and sweat. And though Sam is enthralled by the vacuum of Kurt's mouth, though he wants nothing more than to surrender to blissful nova with every collision of their groins, he treasures equally the touch of their uncovered toes, the knocking of bare knees, the collective gravity of their legs, the pale and tan shines of their sides. His hands sculpt messy waves from Kurt's hair; Kurt's paint streaks on Sam's chest and back.

Sam's eyes have closed and when he opens them he sees Kurt staring warmly, despite the way his head tosses with every thrust, forehead creased, a lock of hair tossing wildly. Kurt takes Sam's hand and leads it low, holds it tight between them, and the strange intimacy of the gesture makes Sam moan long and loud, the feeling of their joined grip bouncing against one another, and Kurt says, "Don't come Sam." He stops bucking, releases Sam and clutches both their dicks in one hand, rubbing slowly up and down. "Don't come Sam," he repeats, leaning forward so that his breath pours static into Sam's ears. "Do you know why?" Sam is in no condition to respond. "You're going to come in my mouth Sam," Kurt says, and gently unwraps his fingers.

Kurt's words blind him. He is a single, white note, and when Kurt lifts his body the note sings over arctic hills; when he draws his hands down across Sam's abs the note follows, riding their shadows like river currents. He cannot see but he must, he absolutely must. He lifts his head and when his neck complains he nearly laughs at the feeble deterrent.

Kurt's hair is a brown oval and his hands perch cruelly to either side of Sam's scrotum, so close that he can feel Kurt's pulse ripple the adjacent air. The first touch is the fold of Kurt's lips, pressed softly against the tip of his cock, the faintest kiss; then his tongue emerges, slides effortlessly along him, and Sam strains against his own skin, balls fists in the sheets and offers silent prayers about nothing at all. And then Kurt's mouth opens, and takes the head, begins a deliberate bob, swirls his tongue in ways Sam cannot describe by touch alone except to say they are indescribable. Sam feels the accidental but inevitable skim of Kurt's teeth, hears wet slurps, sees Kurt's lips reach halfway down his length, and when Kurt brings a hand to cup his balls he knows it is over, damnably soon, a gleaming moment of warmth within and warmth without, fire like dawn, midnight lightning, springtime washing deep, summer waxing eternal, waxing eternal...

His head falls back onto a cold pillow. He allows himself three tempered breaths.

One.

Two.

Three.

As he leaps Kurt is wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, so Sam cannot fully see his expression, but when Sam pins the boy down he moans without prompting. In the wake of his orgasm Sam's brain plays him affirming songs on repeat but he ignores them, presses a closed-mouth kiss hard against Kurt's lips and winds his tongue down his stomach, pulls Kurt's legs from the bed and kneels on the floor. He exercises no restraint; there is no foreplay. He secures Kurt's cock with one hand—he has never seen it this close, and marvels a moment; in his haze he has the urge to introduce himself to it, believes that this would be absolutely hilarious, but for time's sake decides against it—rounds his mouth and dives.

He is overzealous at first. He is startled by how completely it fills his mouth and gags immediately, pulls back and coughs. If Kurt notices he doesn't show it, though, so Sam resumes more cautiously, letting his tongue reach where his throat is not ready to. He pumps gently with his hand as he works, spurred by Kurt's raucous breathing, but after only a few moments decides these toneless noises are not enough. Impatience or daring triumphs and he stills himself around Kurt a moment, wets his middle finger, delves deeper between Kurt's legs and wiggles in a knuckle's worth more easily than he expects to, feels Kurt tense around him, feels Kurt's hand latch onto his hair painfully.

"Is Finn here?" Kurt says in a husky whisper. The question comes so out of nowhere that Sam is a bit startled, and for a moment he worries that Kurt is suggesting something that sincerely threatens to kill Sam's mood.

Sam pulls his mouth off Kurt. "Um, what—"

" _Is Finn here_ ," Kurt hisses with closed eyes and barred teeth.

"Uh—no he left a while ago, I—"

Kurt lets out a wail of pleasure that resonates in his marrow, makes a marimba of his bones. Sam pushes forward as though hypnotized, driving his finger deeper. As he takes Kurt again into his mouth the boy nearly shouts, "Oh god Sam suck me, oh keep doing that OH Sam, please don't stop, _ahh—_ "

The climax comes so quickly that Sam is not ready for it. He feels the strain of Kurt's dick expanding against his tongue and nearly chokes as the first stream hits the back of his throat, pulls back for the second time in a fit of coughing, so that the subsequent blasts spray his skin.

Heat stains him but he feels victory pound in his veins. He rests on the cool floor. Kurt breaths out, and in, and out.

* * *

Kurt after is peach and pink and red, coordinated even when unclothed, skin flushing autumn. Sam washes his face with lavender-scented soap and then tugs the sheet gently from under Kurt's recovering form, crawls beside him and lets the linen fall. It feels insubstantial, ethereal. Feckless. But in moments it has banished the pockets of air around their bodies, and all that remains beneath is Kurt and Sam. They are a universe.

Kurt turns and his cheek falls like the skin of a hot air balloon into Sam's shoulder, and Sam twists their legs together, rolls the blood from his arms with the weight of Kurt's side. An itch gnaws where Kurt's hair glances his jawline and he slides his body down. Their foreheads knock like pool balls. Currents of air illumine the places where Kurt's saliva brand him. He is impossibly comfortable.

The thought of leaving strikes Sam like a match and he opens his mouth to blow out the flame. Today. He has three things to say, and he will say them carefully. This is one of them: "I think I should stay over."

Kurt breathes heavily through his nose. His eyes loll open.

"I mean, I think I should stay the night." He lifts his mouth to Kurt's forehead, fans the sweat on his skin with pursed lips. "I can leave before your dad gets home in the morning. I'm used to getting up early."

Kurt watches him with a curator's eyes. "I don't know, Sam," he says, and lowers his gaze. His hair settles against Sam's neck.

"I do." Sam runs his palm along Kurt's shoulder blades, feels the arm beneath Kurt roar needles.

Kurt drums his fingertips against Sam's chest.

"I'm not moving," Sam says, and bristles at Kurt's silence. Sam knows Kurt lies with silences but sometimes Kurt believes himself.

"I just don't think it's a good idea to set a precedent," Kurt says delicately, and Sam's patience, his measured pace, breaks and swells over sand dunes in his throat.

"I broke up with Mercedes," Sam blurts, his voice all thumbs.

He swears he can feel Kurt contracting, becoming somehow smaller. He is incorporeal, he has vanished from Sam's arms. He sits, sheet unintentionally pinned to his stomach by his elbow as he rubs his eyes with both hands, groans like a distant foghorn. "Sam, Sam, _why_?"

Sam does not know what to do. His mind racing at breakneck speed snags and he is disoriented, tangles himself in a web that spells in glistening dendrites: What? " _Why?_ Kurt why do you think?"

Kurt is not listening. "Everything was working so well!" Kurt throws his hands down like bolts of lightning. "Why in the world would you— _agh!_ "

Humiliation batters Sam's stomach with a fusillade of unmet expectations. He has a third thing to say. Things are not—this is wrong. Kurt's reaction stupefies him. He is unprepared. Kurt's frustration, after what they have just shared—he has to fix this. The third thing will fix the others. It has to.

"Kurt I did it because I—"

But his eyes meet Kurt's and are stricken with prescient fear, see nascent panic in the cracks of red that profane the whites, and revises his confession.

"—because I—really care about you."

The words barely fill the space between them. They are thin and watery, and run from his ears like yolk. Sam cannot stand himself, so he stands.

Kurt falls back and then sits up again, curling like warped metal. "Look I—agh, I care about you too—but what do you expect me to do, here? You think I'm obligated to—to _do_ something just because you—"

Sam is pulling his boxers on and stops. "When did I say that? When the fuck did I say that, Kurt?" He resumes dressing. "You're not obligated to do anything at all." Where the fuck is his shirt? "As usual."

"Excuse me?" Kurt's head follows him as he crosses the room.

Sam finds his shirt and immediately forgets where, doesn't care where, and ducks his head through the collar. "No obligations for Kurt, it's all Sam's fault."

"That is _completely_ unfair," Kurt says, face stretched in rage, "if you had any idea how much I have risked for you—"

"For me?" Sam yells. "You mean for your own—your own—You _care_ about me. Well isn't that goddamn sweet." His phone is in his pocket. His keys are in his pocket. His wallet—yes. "So happy to hear about Blaine. Go fuck yourself."

"Sam!" Kurt says, but the door slam cuts the word in two, so that it is not a word at all. It is nonsense, lost in the walls of an empty house.

* * *

Sam is out of metaphors.

He tries to think of new words to call his feelings but he does not know any. He wants words to hide behind but what he is is tired and stupid and walking alone in the dark.

Then he stands beneath a bus stop sign for twenty minutes, watching store lights do nothing. His face feels dry in the humid air.

The bus comes. It is meaningless. It is a bus. He pays the driver $1.50.

He sits and the air from a vent beside him his cold. His shoes feel damp but are merely cold. Sweat makes his hair stick to his forehead.

Maybe he will sleep here. A bus, a motel room.

The radio is playing, and a singer sings:

_Some boys are filling_

_Some boys are filling a hole_

_Some boys are sleeping_

_Some boys are sleeping alone_

_Some boys don't know how to love..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artists and songs, in order, are:
> 
> Mae - Where the Falls Begin  
> Porcupine Tree - Open Car  
> Animal Collective - My Girls  
> The New Amsterdams - Proceed with Caution  
> The Dear Hunter - A Sua Voz  
> The Corrs - Summer Sunshine  
> All Time Low - Damned if I Do Ya (Damned if I Don't)  
> Panic! at the Disco - The Calendar & Sarah Smiles  
> Death Cab for Cutie - Some Boys


	5. The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt's fingers riot in the creases between keys on the house phone, so it is three tries before he gets Blaine's number right. Kurt's cell is silenced and wrapped in one of Finn's hoodies beneath Kurt's bed.
> 
> He is sick with lying. Lies hiccup bile in his blood and dissolve like sugar on his tongue. He is wrenched side to side on a cloying sea.
> 
> He consoles himself: There is no truth, no intrinsic truth. There is a word for that—something intrinsically true. It is on the tip of his tongue. What is it?
> 
> It is bullshit.
> 
> Why is he calling? He doesn't remember. Blaine's perky voicemail message ends. Beep.
> 
> "I'm—there's something I need to tell you." He will lie and tell the truth at the same time. "It's this: I'm in love."
> 
> He places the phone on the receiver. What it is, damn it? What is the word?

Ohio is a shorn tooth strapped to northern land by routes like roots, or held loosely by the pulp of Marblehead and Sandusky to the Great Lake shore. Tennessee is a splinter in the palm of the States, cutting the blood flow from vertical veins with hyphenated names like the children of divorcees: Indiana-Alabama, Illinois-Mississippi. New York is a horse's head in the bed of the Northeast, Ontario like a muzzle holding closed the limp mouth as Long Island bleeds out the Hudson. Colorado is a box that he cannot think outside of.

Lately Sam has been thinking about the shapes of places.

* * *

The morning after Sam leaves him naked beneath the sheets Kurt showers and then stands in a towel watching fog fade from the bathroom mirror. His hands feel strange.

He washes them again in the sink but still they feel coated in oil, feel as though they will stain what he touches. He is a Midas of grime.

He inhales hot air through measured breaths as the mirror begins to clear. He wonders what his face will look like.

He turns the water on hot and watches steam rise from the sink basin.

* * *

When Sam awakens a kernel of his brain searches for his body. It lets waves loose like hunting dogs that drag echoes kicking and screaming back until he remembers his edges, feels the direction of gravity. So he can identify "down." Far too easily. But which way is up? God, which way is up?

* * *

Kurt's fingers riot in the creases between keys on the house phone, so it is three tries before he gets Blaine's number right. Kurt's cell is silenced and wrapped in one of Finn's hoodies beneath Kurt's bed.

He is sick with lying. Lies hiccup bile in his blood and dissolve like sugar on his tongue. He is wrenched side to side on a cloying sea.

He consoles himself: There is no truth, no intrinsic truth. There is a word for that—something intrinsically true. It is on the tip of his tongue. What is it?

It is bullshit.

Why is he calling? He doesn't remember. Blaine's perky voicemail message ends. Beep.

"I'm—there's something I need to tell you." He will lie and tell the truth at the same time. "It's this: I'm in love."

He places the phone on the receiver. What it is, damn it? What is the word?

* * *

Sam lies fully clothed in an empty home. The motel room floor is bare. He wonders briefly if he has awoken to a portent.

But no. His phone complains from the nightstand with texts and missed calls from worried parents. He wonders if it counts as ironic that he is only three doors away.

There is nothing from Kurt.

The neighbor's cat gives him uncertain looks from the adjacent bed but does not stir as he stands. Sam scratches her behind the ears. "Take my calls, would you?" he asks her blankly. She squints her eyes and purrs.

On the back of the note is a door: _Sam – thanks for taking care of Happy as always – tell folks I say hi – back this weekend, Mr. H_.

He supposes it is time to go.

Emptiness knows no chord. If anything it is a wide octave, a single note with many faces, all blind to the harmony of central things. He cannot walk an octave so empty. His legs reach only so far.

* * *

At dinner Kurt eats slow and barely. Forks cry against plates like the sound of things breaking.

"You feeling alright, kid?" his father asks.

"Yes," Kurt answers. He watches Finn chew on a dead animal with his mouth slightly open.

"Mm," his father says. "Heard Sam was over last night. Hope he and your brother kept the noise down on that, uh—what's the new one, something with aliens, right? They keep it down?"

"Yes."

His father watches him, nodding his head but with eyes narrowed, appraising. He shares a glance with Carole. "Blaine's back soon, huh? Excited?"

"Yes," Kurt answers.

Forks against plates. The sound of breaking things.

* * *

Sam forgets the eyes of God and eats before grace but swallows his food like communion, with devout attention, loaf after loaf of sacred flesh.

"Wanna slow down there, son?" his dad asks. Sam's body navigates uncertainly around his dinner—is this sudden gift of sustenance blessing or curse?

"No," Sam answers. His teeth clench with every bite. They are struggling workers on a disassembly line, making mulch to feed the gaping furnace of his throat.

His mother chews on her lip. "Sam," she says, scraping together a motherly tone from shards of fatigue. "Are you going to tell us where you were last night?"

"No."

Her tongue laps nervously at the corner of her mouth. "Because I know it's been... hard, for you, but I think we should talk about—"

"No," Sam answers.

Stevie and Stacie bow their heads solemnly. There is a hole in their brother, and they do not want to see inside.

* * *

Kurt lies on his back in bed at night and watches the screen of his cell phone. The call he has dreaded and longed for did not come.

 _Sam?_ he aches.

* * *

Sunset, sunrise.

Over the low plateau Indiana cups in its palm a cloud fills its head with nightmares and ferments to black. With ego and because it can it whips dust and fog into a cream that ices the land, lashes lightning like scarecrows' hands. _I am power_ , it says. Like young lust it claims the air around it and recklessly grows and grows and grows.

* * *

By the time Sam gets back from work on the 23rd someone has tied a balloon to the doorknob. And he can't stand it. He can't stand it—the thought of being inside, of spreading gloom like cancer through the family joy—so he sits outside and airs his skin in the slim breeze.

He is a disease unto himself, anyway. Kurt is an epidemic in Sam's mind. He had assumed that escaping the confines of walls they had shared would free him from the collage of memories trampling one another in his head. But everything reminds him: a touch of color on a customer's cheek, the empty passenger seats of company cars.

He is drunk on angst, he knows, but suspects the hangover will be worse. So he cultivates sorrow and rage in the swamp of his brain.

The balloon's raw tin shine flashes like a castaway's signal to passing planes, and standing he unties its flat ribbon from the handle. It floats upward slowly as though reluctant to leave the ground. With strange intensity Sam is struck suddenly by a feeling of guilt; but with a gentle nod, as though of understanding, the balloon turns it back to Sam and faces the inevitable sky. Sam watches it vanish from Ohio.

He thinks maybe he smells rain.

* * *

 _Dear Blaine,_ Kurt writes.

_I can't bring myself to say this to your face. I guess I'm a coward even after everything you've taught me. But you deserve to know, and I know—or hope that I know—that we can weather whatever anger you absolutely deserve to feel._

_While you were away—_

He doesn't know how to put words to the summer. Or he does, too well, and can't bear to see the season reduced to crude smears of graphite on lined paper.

Oh well.

— _I made a stupid mistake. I kissed_ (he erases, and then restarts) _Sam kissed me at the pool not long after you left, and I was going to tell you but I didn't. I saw him_ (he will be gentle) _a few times after, and I didn't mean for anything to happen, but it did. Not_ (it takes him forever to write the word) _sex, we didn't have_ (again) _sex. But things happened. We started to feel_ (no—erase) _Sam started to feel things for me, and that's when I finally found the strength to stop._

_Please don't blame Sam. I know he never intended to hurt you. He is going through so much these days. The fault is entirely mine._

_I will do anything to prove to you that it couldn't possibly happen again. I love you, Blaine. And I want you to take as long as you need to forgive me._

_I don't know what I'd do if I lost you._

He cracks his window and thinks about signing his name.

* * *

The storm has grown fat and sloppy, indulgent and proud. It tickles the earth with streams of rain, hanging like tentacles from cumulus bodies. It groans when the earth does not laugh. Flustered it moves on. But in its hubris its gut catches in the tide of the Westerlies, and in no time it is forced east, toward Lima, caught in a current that pushes it farther and farther from home.

* * *

 _Dear Blaine,_ Kurt writes.

_I can't bring myself to say this to your face. I guess I'm a coward even after everything you've taught me. But it needs to be said and I'm going to say it, one way or another._

_I'm just going to say it. I_ (… … … … …) _think we should see other people._

_I do love you, Blaine._

He writes more, much more, but the paper grows heavier with each superfluous phrase, until he is sure that he will not be able to lift it. In the end he erases all explanation. The sheet becomes a mess of wrinkles and ghost words.

So now there are two pieces of paper on his desk.

* * *

As it crosses the state border the storm swallows a wayward balloon and sucks the air from its skin. And while a choir boy sleeps it pulls a letter through his open window.

Sunset, sunrise.

* * *

The roads are slick with rain and detour signs thread Kurt from familiar routes through the downpour, so that when he arrives the motel feels misplaced, tucked away in the wrong corner of reality. His clothes soak cold and heavy on the walk to the door. His skin numbs to match his mind.

Sam's dad answers when he knocks. He is in the midst of smiling widely.

"Oh," he says.

Stevie and Stacie are bickering over the TV remote but quiet when they notice Kurt in the doorway; Mrs. Evans is running a brush through her hair, and stops when she sees his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

The family has petrified before him and Sam is nowhere to be seen. Kurt is not sure what to say. "Hi," he tries, brightly.

"Oh—oh hi, of course," bumbles Mr. Evans. "Hello, come in, welcome, Kurt, how've you been, haven't seen you, quite the storm, must be soaked..."

"You know actually, if Sam's not here maybe I'll—just come back later, I didn't mean to interrupt." There is a weird feeling inside, as though time is gripping desperately to some unseen cliff's edge. Kurt wants none of it.

Mr. Evans opens his mouth but then closes it and cocks his head to one side. "Mm." He glances over his shoulder. "Have uh... have you talked to Sam recently?"

Kurt shakes his head self-consciously, wonders how much they know. He swallows worry, fights with peristalsis the fear that gossip will make his decision for him. "No." His eyes wander in diagonals.

"Mm," Mr. Evans repeats, and clears his throat. He shifts and Kurt senses uncertainty. "Well—I think maybe you should." He steps forward and Kurt backs up, frowning. Kurt nearly flinches when Mr. Evans's hand jabs out the door. "Three doors that way," he instructs, pointing.

Kurt swallows again. "O-oh," he says, nodding. "Thanks."

"Mhm." Every face is unreadable. "Bye now."

"Goodbye," Kurt says. The word rings in an oddly formal way before the door closes.

* * *

The room sighs with the sound of passing airplanes that remind them both of the radical force of distance, make the world seem large. Light in bars tumbles through the blinds and coats the walls with a brown balm. Kurt sees music everywhere.

Sam is sitting on the far bed, legs crossed, a gray cat wrapped around itself in his lap. Kurt lowers himself onto the other. It complains with dry springs like the fossils of bird calls. Between them an aisle of plain carpet sits with violence in its weave.

Sam's eyes are locked on the cat's fur and he has said nothing. So Kurt starts: "I thought I should come see you."

"K," Sam replies blankly.

Kurt lets air out through his nose. "You know I always pegged you for a dog person," he says, in a meager attempt to tear brightness through the ethereal fabric that binds them dark.

Sam shrugs. "I always pegged you for a person with his shit together."

The fabric clings tight and Kurt feels hurt slalom his ribs. "Sam that's—"

"Look why did you come here?" Sam says, turning his head up. "You want to _have a little fun_? Strip down, and make out, and and—get yours and be out of here by lunchtime?" His movements are vicious; the cat startles and dives to the floor.

"Sam!—"

"'cause if that's it, well, come on, wouldn't want to bore you with goddamn small talk!" Sam swings his legs off the bedside and grabs the hem of his own shirt, pulling it with clumsy fierceness up and off. His skin shines like beach sand in the divided light.

Kurt's temperance is stained by craving but he holds steady. In his mind he is a glass jar full to the lip. He will drain himself but slowly. He will not spill over. "S-Sam I just came here to talk, I _only_ want to talk," he insists.

Sam laughs, music and disaster, the sound of steel drums rolling down stairs. "Now where have I heard that before. Come on, Kurt." He stands and snaps the button from his jeans. "Mm, oh, Kurt, want you so bad..." Thunder punctuates his mocking words as he drops his pants to the floor. Kurt feels sick. "Come on, boy toy at the ready! COME ON, Kurt! What are you waiting for?"

The glass tips. A vacuum opens in Kurt's lungs and he implodes. His head hides in his shoulders and tears strangle the curves of his eyes. His sniffs and then breaks, shakes silently. No. A long cacophonous slide in light on Sam's chest. No. The past and present seesaw terror in a fan shape along his torso. No. He shakes and shakes. What has he done.

Sam's breath is fast and arhythmic. "Oh God," he prays.

And then the world is a womb, Kurt is pressed into unbeing by human heat. Sam's arms hold him like soft armor. "I'm-I'm ss-sorry, I'm s-so sorry," Kurt gasps, teeth inadvertently marking the skin of Sam's shoulder.

"No no no no no no no no," Sam pleads, voice high and frantic, "Oh God Kurt, I didn't—I don't know what got into me I was just—"

"I gg-ot into you," Kurt sobs, "I j-just wanted to talk and—"

Sam kisses him onto his back and silent. He glimpses Sam's expression—it is like crumpled paper, a poem shredded in rancor. "Shh, shh," Sam hums against his lips.

And for a moment distance fades to wavelengths, the width of desperate sounds.

After a minute Sam reaches for Kurt's collar and flinches as cold hands find his back. He loosens one button, two.

"Sam?" Kurt whispers.

"Yeah."

Kurt licks his lips. "I need to—I did want to talk and..."

Sam presses his thumb into Kurt's half-exposed shoulder. "Yeah." He struggles to lift himself, a hatchling beating its wings.

When he is on the other bed again Kurt says, "Close your eyes."

Sam's lip twitches. Eddies of distrust begin again to churn as he cools. "Why."

"Because... because I want to be honest, and I want you to be honest, and sometimes—sometimes senses get in the way." Kurt shifts. "I just—I _just_ want to talk. Nothing else. No—no thinking or seeing or any distractions." He swallows, flush. "For now."

"Just words."

"Yes."

"Just being honest."

Kurt swallows again. "Yes."

Sam feels his heart arm itself with skepticism. But he closes his eyes.

* * *

"I—I need to make a choice."

"You're just realizing this?"

"I said I was going to be honest. Ok? So let me talk. I want to... I don't want to fight. Here's—I wrote these letters last night. Letters to Blaine. And one of them said—one of them told him I was going to stay and one of them told him I was going break up with him. I don't know which one to... But it occurred to me last night—or this morning?—that it wasn't enough just to be honest to Blaine... I have to be honest to me, and—to you."

"Honest to me."

"Yes."

"...why this... I mean, why this sudden..."

"Because of what happened the other night. Sam I—I've kind of been scaring myself. With how easy it is."

"...easy?"

"I mean _this_. And the simple truth of it is... I'm not—I don't if you want to hear all this but I _need_ to say it to someone Sam. I have to, it's all—"

"Kurt just. Keep going."

"Fine. ...I'm not—attracted to Blaine like I am to you. I'm just _not_. I try to be when I've talked to him and... I'm attracted to him but—I can't explain it. It's this... He's getting back in two days and I'm trying to—to tell you all this and all I can think about is that you're sitting there in your boxers and I don't know if I could leave without us doing... even if I wanted to, and the worst part is I _don't_ , I want to just—shut up and let you undress me and..."

"Kurt that's not _the worst part_. That's not _bad_! You don't have control over—"

"Exactly! Exactly. I don't have control, Sam, and it scares me. But it is the worst part, because... because I _don't even feel guilty_. Not about that. I feel horrible guilt, awful, nauseating guilt. You know what for? For not feeling guilty."

"...look, do you want me to say it? Then _leave him!_ Clearly if you—"

"Yeah, leaving him will make me feel less guilty, for sure."

"I'm saying—look it makes me sound like I've got an ego or something but if you're more attracted to me then..."

"Yeah. ...Sam please don't take... fuck it, ok, honesty, right? I don't know how to be comfortable around you."

"...comfortable."

"Yes."

"...comfortable. So now love for you is about being comfortable."

"It's not _about_ it, Sam, but god! It's not about fear, or... always being tense, or... Do you know last night the letter where I told Blaine what we'd done got blown out my window, first I thought maybe it was some kind of sign until I started thinking someone might find it, I was so sure somebody would find it and—I don't know, recognize the names—I was—it was awful."

"That's because it's a secret! If it's not a secret any more then who cares?"

" _I_ care! Everyone will care! I'll be _that_ guy, who... cheated on a guy who'd been great to him, and second of all _love_ is about feeling comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Love."

"Yes."

"Love."

"...Yes. —Kurt? —And also Blaine has been _great_ to you how, exactly? Fine I'm the first to admit I wasn't exactly a—neutral observer or whatever but geez, was it the—"

"Sam I think you mean... lust, or... Sam you don't _know_ me enough to..."

"...don't... oh that's rich—yeah wait, who are you again? Let's see spent like three months hooking up with you and talking _every day_ , not to mention the entire school year before that—"

"But Dalton—"

"Was three months, and you were _dating_ Blaine by the end of it!"

"So?"

"So don't try and fucking tell me I can't be in love with you but Blaine somehow can! Ok?"

"...Blaine has done _plenty_ for me, you have no idea—"

"Don't change the subject Kurt!"

"—have no idea—he—he got me to stand up to Karofsky, first of all, and that was _before_ we were dating."

"He got—wow, how brave of him, sending you in to—Kurt I stood up to him _for you!_ "

"Oh and now I owe you for that?"

"What? —No! No. Kurt, of course you don't. That's not—what I meant was, _I_ can do the things that Blaine can do for you. And... you know. And more."

"Sam..."

"Don't—why do you always have to use that... like you're _pitying_ me or something?"

"Sam if we... everyone will know what I did, my dad and everyone from Glee and..."

"Why? Why do they have to know? Why can't you just have broken up with him and then we... you know?"

"So now you _want_ me to lie."

"—No. You're right. Ok, yes, you're right. No."

"...I haven't seen him in months, and who knows... I just don't know if I can make a fair decision if I haven't seen him since the beginning of summer."

"Kurt we're not goddamn—this isn't like trying on two pairs of clothes! You don't get to—to buy one set and then return it if you decide later that you—you want the other one, or it's too tight after all, or..."

"Well then how do—damn it, Sam, how do I make this decision?"

"Choose me."

"Thanks, everything's clear now."

"Choose me."

"Sam..."

"I love you Kurt."

"Sam—"

"Kurt don't you dare try to—No, tell me this is all just physical for you. You said you cared about me, I want to know. Tell me it's just sex and. And that's it."

"It's not..."

"It's not? I love you Kurt."

"Sam..."

"I love you Kurt. I love you, I love you, you stupid beautiful wonderful..."

"...Sam."

"I love you Kurt."

"I think... I think I love you too."

* * *

Eyes open. Lids lifted mark the shells of celestial spheres, false idols, bearers of barriers that crack in sunlight. The world opens. On separate beds again are too boys, more than words, less than words, the servants and masters of words.

"I love you Kurt."

"I think I love you too."

Wind batters the door with solicitations of nature and wrath. And in humid air they kiss like life and death.

* * *

The air is red like phoenix feathers, prescient with a weight like new ash. Sam's head throbs like a bloated star.

He feels trumpets sound, draped in royal crests, doves dancing through wreathed arches. Kurt's shoulders are the arcs of gales. Sam's hands climb down buttons and under silk. His fingers smolder in the oven of Kurt's body as thunder roils under clouds outside.

Sam cries for the things Kurt does not know.

* * *

The air is light blue like frost or the peaceful face of an unmade soul. Kurt feels it calmly, feels life as though through a beaded curtain, teardrops unshed and laced by spider silk.

Against Sam his mouth feels sage and wide, the undaunted gape of caverns on the ocean floor. Sam holds him like water pressure, rings in his ears. When Sam unwraps him from his clothes he is a pearl, freed from the oyster, smooth and solid and pure. When Sam's fingers enter him he sees polygons of light, in dilute shades, as though reflected off fish scales.

He grips Sam softly, and his brain swims in dust. There is hidden water somewhere in the dry ground of his mind. He will be delved. Sam will find it.

* * *

Kurt's touch conjures a squall that lopes along his bare back, spreading white embers that scorch the whispering angels from Sam's shoulders. His man—his—is a heron, wrought with prehistoric grace, a beauty young and ancient. He feels Kurt's intellect through his forehead, piercing and open, his will in his hands.

He is in love. He has known for too long and never before.

When the will in Kurt's hands pulls Sam forward toward the place his fingers lay buried he gasps, and a wayward sirocco parches his mouth. But with eyes open and tongue unfazed he waits, charged and carmine, hot and bold and ready.

* * *

At first it is a searing, chemical feeling, a nuclear reaction. Then it is a receding, a becoming hollow. And lastly, when after decades Sam is finally in, it is the eye of God, cobalt and suffocated in deep water; his devout atheism notwithstanding—it is the eye of God.

Soon Sam's thrusts are long and regular, like the drag of a pendulum. An eleventh hour chimes through Kurt with every touch of thigh to thigh. His front scours friction from the surface of Sam: his first, this imperfect harbor of a boy.

Kurt whimpers like violin strings and when he comes Sam does, too, and he feels full and empty at the same time, and clarity is liquid lead, heavy and clean, and like a printing press his weight leaves language on the pages of white sheets and Sam's hardcover smile.

Tautology, Kurt thinks to himself. That's it. That's the word.

* * *

Sam does not understand.

Kurt has dressed and opened the window behind the blinds, so that the rain breathes static in and bolts of lightning call deeper groans from the earth. Sam's naked body makes snow angels on the bed.

"I don't understand."

"I know."

Kurt moves stiffly but somehow saint-like, is collected like the faces in old paintings. Sam does not understand.

"But we just..."

Kurt nods slightly.

"I am so glad," he says, and sounds achingly sincere, "that you were my first, Sam."

Sam is dreaming. Isn't he?

"What does that mean?"

Kurt takes a calm breath. "I can't decide, Sam. I'm not going to decide." He looks down at his hands. "I—I love both of you. I-I think," he says, but the stutter folds back into serenity, and Sam wonders if he imaged it.

"Kurt you can't, you _can't_ keep doing this." Sam is a Gordian knot, tangled and writhing. He must untie himself before the sword falls.

"I know." He nods again. "—I'm not going to. I can't—you're right. I can't live like this. I can't face it. I'm so sorry."

Sam has heard him say it a hundred times, wants to scoff or laugh as he always does. But there is body in the breath, and the sharp edge of honesty, and panic tips an hourglass inside him, pours sand upward through his throat.

"Kurt—Kurt whatever I did I didn't—"

Kurt's eyes glaze sad. "You didn't do anything, I mean, in a good way—Sam don't you... You don't deserve to feel this way. You deserve better than this whole mess and... I'm stuck in it and I'm not going to keep you stuck in it any more."

Sam's breath shudders and stalls like a gasping engine. "You—Kurt I don't _want_ to be unstuck, I'm in love with—"

"Sam you have to stop saying that," Kurt says, wavering slightly. "I—I've treated you like, like worse than nothing and—and I don't deserve those feelings, and if you'd—"

"That is NOT your decision to make," Sam protests, leaning forward. "You don't get to decide that. I love you."

"Sam I said you have to stop—"

"The clothes," he says. "You brought me, at the motel... I mostly wear Finn's old things out but sometimes when I'm at home I put them on, your stuff, Kurt, because they remind me of you. Of the things you did for me and your—your crazy ass fashion sense and your courage."

"Sam, please—" Kurt's voice trembles faintly.

Sam will not stop. "I think about—our duet," he says. His eyes are misting: _do not see_ , they say. "Every time the radio comes on, looking for the right song, and there aren't any. There just aren't, there's nothing perfect enough, and I'm going to write it, Kurt, and we're going to sing it together."

Kurt's hand fumbles at the doorknob. Maybe hope is polluting his senses but he feels this: that Kurt's solution is fracturing, that Sam will prove it imperfect. "St-stop," Kurt pleads.

"I love you," Sam repeats, loud. "And you love me. Kurt everybody makes mistakes, love confuses the fuck out of everyone, if you just stay we can talk—"

He has gotten the door open. His face is away. He is a mystery and Sam is out of time.

"KURT!" he shouts.

His friend's back halts in the door frame.

"This is the last chance," Sam begs softly.

There is a long pause, the break between lightning and thunder, the space where summer ends but before the leaves fall.

The door closes. Kurt is on the outside.

The cat purrs in the corner. Rain beats the pavement and the noon sun hides.

* * *

Three days later Sam watches his phone buzz insistently across the seat of a dirt-caked chair by the motel's rental office.

Time has moved quickly. For all the sparsity of their possessions packing has been an ordeal—fitting five comfortably is difficult under any circumstance, and the drive to Boulder is too long for overcrowding. Sam has worked to the wire; their new start is fresh but will almost certainly be slow. His tips will pay for gas on the way.

Last night at a party at Rachel's he had said his goodbyes to his friends, in his own way. He had told no one that the 21st had been his father's lucky day after all.

It is sick, he supposes, but he had not wanted to make Kurt's decision any easier.

The party was partly to honor Blaine's return. Kurt and Blaine did not attend.

And now his phone is ringing and ringing, and Kurt's name brightens the screen.

He wonders: Maybe Kurt has heard. Maybe he has heard and is furious, or relieved. Maybe he is celebrating his decision, is calling to say that he has chosen Blaine, that it is for the best. Maybe they have broken up. Maybe Kurt has gotten it into his head that he is better off alone.

Or maybe—maybe—

"Sam?" his dad calls from the driver's seat. "Ready to go?"

The call goes to voicemail. For a moment Sam sees a future, a mirage of time in a platinum line before him. He will listen to the message; Kurt will tell him of the breakup, of his need for a second chance, and Sam will oblige. He will stay behind, in Ohio, live in Mike's basement or Artie's guest room, pay his way best he can. It will be hard to trust Kurt, at first. They will fight over how much to tell the others, to tell Burt or Mercedes. Blaine will transfer and cause hell, or guilt Kurt with forgiveness. Sam will be startled at the bigotry he suddenly faces, will give everything second thoughts. But then in winter they'll go ice skating, and spend nights huddled under thick blankets in PJs or nothing at all, and in the spring they'll dance at senior ball, and when the club wins Nationals they'll sing on street corners because they can. College will try them with its inevitable distance, but Sam will travel to New York every other weekend, on his own dollar and with money sent from Colorado—and once Kurt lands a Broadway role Sam will join the tech crew, help with set-up and tear down, or they'll travel the continent with a moving company, hopping from place to place until Sam or Kurt lands on one knee, and they trade words at an altar with their families down in front. And when they're ready they'll move somewhere close by, so that their parents can babysit, and when the end of the world comes they will sit hand in hand and smile, and sleep soundly side by side.

"Sam?" asks his dad.

"Yeah," Sam says. He rises and stretches his back and closes his mind and pulls open the car door and settles himself beside Stevie in the back.

He leaves the phone on the chair. The screen throws light like music notes on the wall.

**Author's Note:**

> If by chance this is anyone's cup of tea, comments mean the world!


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